I am sure that you share with the rest of our country in the sadness regarding the senseless shooting in Colorado during the midnight showing of the new Batman movie that just happened. The guy who did it, really needs to be studied closely, and asked to his face, WHY. I want to know the answer to that question, just like everybody else. And yes, it's a no-brainer, he's been planning it for a very long time. For somebody like him, a graduate student taking classes in the medical field to help SAVE lives, it just seems unbelievable that he would want to kill so many people like that, for no reason.
Stress can make people snap, though, so perhaps that is the main culprit of his momentary insanity? Hard to say, but he's inflicted so much pain on so many people, you can almost feel it in the air. There is a stinging, painful sensation going on all around us, can you sense that too? It almost feels like a waste of time going out and about to do something as mundane as shopping, knowing how many people are crying right now, planning funerals, hurting...it makes me want to shut down.
And if that's not bad enough, I just read an article about Greece, and how they are now facing their own version of the "Great Depression." I've been predicting another Depression for 2 decades now, I could see it coming, and if the so-called "experts" didn't see it coming especially when the bank bailouts happened, well, then they should all be fired. Any MORON with half a brain could see this coming, I mean, really. Well, maybe NOT Mitt Romney, he can't see much of anything but his own wealth. Did you hear the comment he recently made at a fund raising event? About how the "waiters and waitresses" who were working there serving them---all the rich folks---all that pricey food, probably know more about how hard it is to deal with this economy than anyone else in the room!
If that doesn't sum up his entire existence on this planet, I really don't know what would. HE ADMITS THAT HE IS OUT OF TOUCH WITH PEOPLE AND WHAT THEY ARE GOING THROUGH. I swear, if he gets elected, I'm going to start a civil war in this country. I'll fight and organize marches and get people fired up to walk all over Washington DC to protest the insanity of it all. This bullshit has got to stop, and since nobody ELSE seems interested in working to make that happen, maybe I should. Somebody has to.
Here's another article that will send shivers down your spine...it makes me sick. If somebody doesn't rise up soon to fix this stuff, we're ALL going to be dealing with a massive shit-storm of unprecedented proportions, that will NOT go away anytime soon, and WILL affect the next 3 or 4 generations.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.
Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections.
The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.
Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.
"I grew up going to Hawaii every summer. Now I'm here, applying for assistance because it's hard to make ends meet. It's very hard to adjust," said Laura Fritz, 27, of Wheat Ridge, Colo., describing her slide from rich to poor as she filled out aid forms at a county center. Since 2000, large swaths of Jefferson County just outside Denver have seen poverty nearly double.
Fritz says she grew up wealthy in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch, but fortunes turned after her parents lost a significant amount of money in the housing bust. Stuck in a half-million dollar house, her parents began living off food stamps and Fritz's college money evaporated. She tried joining the Army but was injured during basic training.
Now she's living on disability, with an infant daughter and a boyfriend, Garrett Goudeseune, 25, who can't find work as a landscaper. They are struggling to pay their $650 rent on his unemployment checks and don't know how they would get by without the extra help as they hope for the job market to improve.
In an election year dominated by discussion of the middle class, Fritz's case highlights a dim reality for the growing group in poverty. Millions could fall through the cracks as government aid from unemployment insurance, Medicaid, welfare and food stamps diminishes.
"The issues aren't just with public benefits. We have some deep problems in the economy," said Peter Edelman, director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy.
He pointed to the recent recession but also longer-term changes in the economy such as globalization, automation, outsourcing, immigration, and less unionization that have pushed median household income lower. Even after strong economic growth in the 1990s, poverty never fell below a 1973 low of 11.1 percent. That low point came after President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, launched in 1964, that created Medicaid, Medicare and other social welfare programs.
"I'm reluctant to say that we've gone back to where we were in the 1960s. The programs we enacted make a big difference. The problem is that the tidal wave of low-wage jobs is dragging us down and the wage problem is not going to go away anytime soon," Edelman said.
Stacey Mazer of the National Association of State Budget Officers said states will be watching for poverty increases when figures are released in September as they make decisions about the Medicaid expansion. Most states generally assume poverty levels will hold mostly steady and they will hesitate if the findings show otherwise. "It's a constant tension in the budget," she said.
The predictions for 2011 are based on separate AP interviews, supplemented with research on suburban poverty from Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution and an analysis of federal spending by the Congressional Research Service and Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute.
The analysts' estimates suggest that some 47 million people in the U.S., or 1 in 6, were poor last year. An increase of one-tenth of a percentage point to 15.2 percent would tie the 1983 rate, the highest since 1965. The highest level on record was 22.4 percent in 1959, when the government began calculating poverty figures.
Poverty is closely tied to joblessness. While the unemployment rate improved from 9.6 percent in 2010 to 8.9 percent in 2011, the employment-population ratio remained largely unchanged, meaning many discouraged workers simply stopped looking for work. Food stamp rolls, another indicator of poverty, also grew.
Demographers also say:
—Poverty will remain above the pre-recession level of 12.5 percent for many more years. Several predicted that peak poverty levels — 15 percent to 16 percent — will last at least until 2014, due to expiring unemployment benefits, a jobless rate persistently above 6 percent and weak wage growth.
—Suburban poverty, already at a record level of 11.8 percent, will increase again in 2011.
—Part-time or underemployed workers, who saw a record 15 percent poverty in 2010, will rise to a new high.
—Poverty among people 65 and older will remain at historically low levels, buoyed by Social Security cash payments.
—Child poverty will increase from its 22 percent level in 2010.
Analysts also believe that the poorest poor, defined as those at 50 percent or less of the poverty level, will remain near its peak level of 6.7 percent.
"I've always been the guy who could find a job. Now I'm not," said Dale Szymanski, 56, a Teamsters Union forklift operator and convention hand who lives outside Las Vegas in Clark County. In a state where unemployment ranks highest in the nation, the Las Vegas suburbs have seen a particularly rapid increase in poverty from 9.7 percent in 2007 to 14.7 percent.
Szymanski, who moved from Wisconsin in 2000, said he used to make a decent living of more than $40,000 a year but now doesn't work enough hours to qualify for union health care. He changed apartments several months ago and sold his aging 2001 Chrysler Sebring in April to pay expenses.
"You keep thinking it's going to turn around. But I'm stuck," he said.
The 2010 poverty level was $22,314 for a family of four, and $11,139 for an individual, based on an official government calculation that includes only cash income, before tax deductions. It excludes capital gains or accumulated wealth, such as home ownership, as well as noncash aid such as food stamps and tax credits, which were expanded substantially under President Barack Obama's stimulus package.
An additional 9 million people in 2010 would have been counted above the poverty line if food stamps and tax credits were taken into account.
Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, believes the social safety net has worked and it is now time to cut back. He worries that advocates may use a rising poverty rate to justify additional spending on the poor, when in fact, he says, many live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.
A new census measure accounts for noncash aid, but that supplemental poverty figure isn't expected to be released until after the November election. Since that measure is relatively new, the official rate remains the best gauge of year-to-year changes in poverty dating back to 1959.
Few people advocate cuts in anti-poverty programs. Roughly 79 percent of Americans think the gap between rich and poor has grown in the past two decades, according to a Public Religion Research Institute/RNS Religion News survey from November 2011. The same poll found that about 67 percent oppose "cutting federal funding for social programs that help the poor" to help reduce the budget deficit.
Outside of Medicaid, federal spending on major low-income assistance programs such as food stamps, disability aid and tax credits have been mostly flat at roughly 1.5 percent of the gross domestic product from 1975 to the 1990s. Spending spiked higher to 2.3 percent of GDP after Obama's stimulus program in 2009 temporarily expanded unemployment insurance and tax credits for the poor.
The U.S. safety net may soon offer little comfort to people such as Jose Gorrin, 52, who lives in the western Miami suburb of Hialeah Gardens. Arriving from Cuba in 1980, he was able to earn a decent living as a plumber for years, providing for his children and ex-wife. But things turned sour in 2007 and in the past two years he has barely worked, surviving on the occasional odd job.
His unemployment aid has run out, and he's too young to draw Social Security.
Holding a paper bag of still-warm bread he'd just bought for lunch, Gorrin said he hasn't decided whom he'll vote for in November, expressing little confidence the presidential candidates can solve the nation's economic problems. "They all promise to help when they're candidates," Gorrin said, adding, "I hope things turn around. I already left Cuba. I don't know where else I can go."
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Associated Press writers Kristen Wyatt in Lakewood, Colo., Ken Ritter and Michelle Rindels in Las Vegas, Laura Wides-Munoz in Miami and AP Deputy Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.
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Where else to go?? I'll TELL ya where else, foks---CANADA. That's where I'll be going if this country tanks. It's nearby, it's got a booming economy, and sure it's cold as hell like Michigan maybe, but it's livable. My sister lives in the UK, though, so that's another option for me if Canada doesn't pan out. But really, we're all in this same boat together and I don't see anything being solved about any of it----not from EITHER SIDE of the political world.
I don't see how we can avoid this, though, I mean, history does repeat itself. We haven't had a Depression since the 1930's, so it's time for it to meander its way into our lives I guess. I hope you're prepared for it, but I really have no advice as to HOW to prepare for it. I mean, stop spending money on frivolous crap, I guess, that's what I'm trying to do. I've even cut down my visits to the chiropractor (I am not convinced he is doing me much good actually), so that'll save us some money at least. I'm really concerned because so many people we know are hitting the skids and we're the only ones afloat right now that could help them...but if EVERYBODY is sinking, we'll be sinking too, along side them.
Yet, it seems like nobody really cares, or believes it. Everyone's just so busy with their silly lives and silly wastes of time, Twittering and Facebooking, to concern themselves with REAL issues. It's more FUN to laugh at a photo of a pomeranian pirate dog....
......than to sit and worry about the future of our country. I know this. I am guilty of it too, I laughed and laughed at this when I saw it on Facebook yesterday. Pomeranians are just so adorable!! But how are we gonna FEED our pets if we can't afford to feed ourselves? That thought jolts me outta the stupor and into the adult concern of fiscal responsibility.
I wish I had more answers. Studying the Great Depression and the stock market crash of 1929 might be helpful to people, just to see what might happen again, and how. But, the trick is to figure out how to AVOID it from happening again. I also predict that another Holocaust will be coming soon, too, here in our country. Americans will be the victims this time, though, with the rest of the world hating our guts so much. Mark my words. I know of what I speak. I've studied history most of my life. It definitely repeats itself, and gets uglier every time the lessons aren't learned.
That's why we have troubles, you know. God sends us troubles, to see how we deal with 'em. If we learn the lessons from a problem, that problem is solved, and we don't see it again. If we fail to see the lessons presented to us from the problem, however, it will come back at you again and again and again until you DO learn the lessons from it----and some people NEVER learn.
How can we, as a country, work together to avoid such a catastrophe from happening? To HELL with the partisanship crap, I don't care what side anybody is on, we have to work TOGETHER, and that is the biggest lesson God has been trying to teach us since DAY ONE. For some reason, we've ignored this lesson and now it's going to come back at us again, uglier and bigger and worse than ever before.
One guy in Colorado creates so much pain and hatred, and anger, and upset, and death...and destruction. One guy did all that, to all those people, and their families and friends...imagine if EACH ONE OF US actually worked TOGETHER to make positive CHANGE happen in the world? It's not rocket science, folks, we can do it. We just have to WANT to do it.
I learned on 9/11 that it seemed nobody WANTED to prevent such a horrible attack from happening, certainly not GW Bush, and that angered me for over a decade. My attitude went from trying to save the whole world and everybody in it, to this....
And so I have just focused on myself, and my own little part of the world, for at least 10 years now. Just like everybody else did, because when you get overwhelmed by such a huge problem that's bigger than all of us, you tend to just shut down a bit, and try to focus on what you feel you CAN control.
But now, look where all that has gotten us.
Time to change our ways. It may be too little, too late, but there's still time to try.
I miss you Stephen, I miss hearing you sing, I miss knowing you're out there making people feel happy in a world full of turmoil and sadness. I also feel sad that you are here, on this planet, at the same time as me, breathing the same air, and yet I can't simply sit down and talk to you about life and the world like I want to. This blog is my lame-ass attempt at trying to connect with you---a guy who changed MY life, who helped ME through tough times, and who has always BEEN THERE, cheering me up whenever I needed it....
I want to return those favors ten-fold to you, and I want to save the world again. I probably can't, I probably have a miserable failure on the horizon for even trying, but the alternative doesn't seem very appealing. If we're all on the Titanic---and sometimes it feels like we are----well, if I feel that way sometimes, maybe that guy in Colorado felt that way too, and somehow thought if he killed as many people as he could, he would actually be SAVING them from all the turmoil headed our way. Who can understand such a senseless and violent act of hatred like that?
We can all see the problems looming. Yet we are all "too busy" to give a shit. THAT is what makes me feel despair and sadness today. Even writing my article about blow jobs doesn't help. It's stupid. Nina Hartley could probably do a much better job of teaching such a thing than I ever could.
Bye for now.
Love, Rebecca
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