A few weeks ago, I argued that America had become an oligarchy, run by the rich.
I also pointed out that this pretty much started under Reagan. 
A recent study by Princeton confirms both of my points — that our government is now run by and for the very rich, and this has been happening since Reagan drastically reduced taxes on the 1% and got rid of regulations that prevented the kind of abuses that have led to the wealth in our country being divided in a way it hasn’t been in a hundred years.
We can fix this. We outnumber them. We can outvote them all.
But this won’t happen until we make it happen. And that means telling both parties that we won’t put up with it any more.
I know, right? Isn’t that a ridiculous headline?
Not because Stewart is a lightweight; far from it. He does ask important questions and doesn’t let his interviewees off the hook. 
The ridiculous part of it is that it should be someone else. It should be a real journalist, not a comedian who talks about politics.
But the White House says that Jon Stewart was the toughest interview Obama faced in the 2012 election, and that’s not right. And Jon Stewart would be the first person to tell you that.
Some of the problem is that the ones who would ask the tough questions don’t get to. There are some great journalists out there, but the news stations keep them away from the politicians for fear of losing their access or something. They should get Matt Tiabbi in there and stir things up.
And some just ask dumb questions. Obama isn’t scared of Bill O’Reilly no matter how much O’Reilly thinks he is. Obama did a huge interview with him recently where he laughed off O’Reilly’s conspiracy-minded questions about Benghazi and Obamacare. That was easy.
And it should never be easy.
I am not making this up.
People in doctor waiting rooms and airplane terminals were shocked today to learn the new breaking news from CNN: The Titanic has sunk!
102 years ago.
This is breaking! You have to know this! It’s almost as important as the breaking news CNN has reported every day concerning the downed airplane, which generally is along the lines of “nothing found yet.” Breaking!
Saturday Night Live even did a skit satirizing this last weekend, and now CNN is more absurd than the skit.
I am not making this up.
Nobody likes paying taxes. Some libertarians take that to the extreme and claim that taxation is thievery. They paint a picture of the evil government pointing guns at the helpless citizen (usually naked and wearing a barrel for some reason) implying that it is absolutely wrong for any government to demand that citizens contribute to society.
They long for a world where the government expects nothing from its citizens — you know, like no society that has ever existed in the history of the world.
Humans are social creatures, and unless you live in a shack in the woods away from everyone, you are expected to contribute to the society that provides benefits to you. Even primitive societies demand that you take your turn gathering berries or weaving.
To demand otherwise is just selfish.
This does not mean that we can’t complain about the unfairness of our tax system. I do that all the time. We have a hugely unbalanced system where the average person foots the bills so the rich and the corporations don’t have to. We could close loopholes and adjust our tax system to be fairer while reducing (if not eliminating) income tax on the majority of Americans — and we’d still be able to balance a budget.
And we can also complain about what the money is spent on. I also do plenty of that. We spend too much on things we don’t need, and not enough on things we do need.
There is a lot to criticize about our tax system and where the money goes.
But to turn that into “all taxation is thievery” — well, that’s just selfish nonsense.
Bet you didn’t know that the end of the world is coming soon.
According to Pastor John Hagee, the “blood moon” phenomena is surely a sign from God that the end is nigh. It’s just like how Halley’s Comet foretold the end of the world in 1666, and we all remember how the world ended then. Or every other time over the history of mankind we had a blood moon.
Every generation over the past two thousand years have concluded that the world is ending soon and in their own lifetimes.
Pastor Hagee believes that God is sending us a message, by use of a perfectly explainable and completely predictable celestial occurrence with natural bodies obeying the known laws of science.
I mean, how can He be any clearer? I mean, apart from appearing before each of us, speaking in our own language, or doing a thousand other things which would make it absolutely clear He was telling us He existed and the end was near.
Ha ha, we laugh. Pastor Hagee! He’s the guy who also said that Hurricane Katrina was God punishing gay people. What a maroon.
But the fact is that people believe this guy. And this guy, like many prophets, profit greatly from those who believe.
Yeah, sure, they have the right to believe whatever stupid thing they want to. But knowing these people exist and apparently make up a large percentage of the population goes a long way in explaining how certain people get elected, doesn’t it?
ventrellaquest.com 