"I just woke up from a thirty year coma. Somebody fill me in."

[Tommy_Carcetti]

“Well, let’s see. Bill Cosby and Roseanne Barr have completely disgraced and humiliated themselves. Oh yeah, and Donald Trump’s the President.”

“Okay, you know what? I’m just going to go back to sleep now.....”

[grantcart]

1. Republicans hate the FBI and love the Russians

[ffr]

14. Russians, I mean republicans, hate anything that prevents auctions

They auction off the environment for short-term gain.
They auction off our children's future for short-term gain.
They auction off the moral high ground for short-term political gain.
They auction off working families retirement plans for short-term gain.

$$$ rules their world. Turning their backs on America, becoming traitors if need be is just one more thing they're willing to accept in the name of the auction.

[WhiteTara]

2. Good idea. If you don't, you'll also discover

we have traitors in the WH and Congress. That should send you into a deep sleep that lasts until you're dead so you can wake up in a new world!

[DetlefK]

3. There was one republican POTUS who is a geriatric lunatic and one whose name shall not be mentioned.

[DetlefK]

4. There was a worldwide economic crisis and the current President wants to undo the safeguards.

[DetlefK]

5. Mass-shootings of children are the price we pay for keeping the 2nd Amendment.

[DetlefK]

6. There are literal Nazis marching in the streets of the US, with swastikas and torches.

[DetlefK]

7. The current President bragged about the size of his penis during the campaign.

[DetlefK]

8. A black man was elected POTUS, revealing all the racism hiding below the surface.

[Hortensis]

9. :) No, your vote's needed. Time to wake up. (Sorry.)

[jberryhill]

10. The Good News - Rick Astley is STILL not going to give you up

Also, Prince, Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston are all dead.

[bronxiteforever]

11. Ted Nugent alive, David Bowie dead

[kairos12]

12. Raygun to Drumpt. Makes sense.

[BlueJac]

13. You just sleep all this stuff off...

impossible

[gordianot]

15. Much is the same as it was 30 years ago.

Today they say it out loud.

[Uncle Joe]

16. The less than 1% have taken a beating in regards to economic growth for the betterment of the nation

as a whole...nah, just kidding

You're not imagining it: the rich really are hoarding economic growth

(snip)

The chart above shows how much the incomes of each group grew, on average, every year from 1980 to 2014. The two lines show both pre- and post-tax incomes.

The implication is clear. People at or below the median income saw their incomes rise by 1 percent or less every year during that period. That isn’t nothing, but it’s hardly great. At the very bottom, some people have seen incomes fall pre-tax; while most poor households get government assistance to help with that, programs like food stamps or the earned income tax credit fail to reach about 20 to 25 percent of the people they’re meant to help.

But the rich? Boy, the rich made out like bandits. The top 1 percent, but really the top 0.1, top 0.01, and even top 0.001 percent (that last group included only 2,344 adults in 2014) saw really fast, dramatic growth in their incomes after 1980. Contrary to some recent commentary, the large increase in inequality isn’t due to the top 20 percent; affluent, educated professionals with low-six-figure salaries and nice homes in good suburbs aren’t driving this. Their incomes are growing about 1.5 percent a year — not bad, but not that much better than the middle class either. The major spike is in the top 1 percent (adults receiving an average of $1.31 million per year each out of national income) and above, where annual income grew by 3, 4, 5, even 6 percent.

This doesn’t appear to have been the way the economy worked from, say, 1946 to 1980. On the request of the New York Times’s David Leonhardt (who has a knack for smart suggestions for research from empirically minded economists), Piketty, Saez, and Zucman reproduced the same graph for every 34-year period from 1946 to the present. Here’s how the 1946-1980 graph compares to the 1980-2014 graph:

(snip)

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/8/16112368/piketty-saez-zucman-income-growth-inequality-stagnation-chart

Thanks for the thread Tommy Carcetti

[malthaussen]

17. Washington Irving would turn in his pencil. n/t

[marylandblue]

18. Russia lost the Cold War then took over the United States