Kid is bipolar. No doubt in my mind

I hope someone else figured that out, like during his rehab he saw a psychiatrist and was being stabilized on meds. Problem is with bp, it takes a long time for a young person to accept. There's a yearning to be normal. There's a lot of shame. The fact that people know didly poo about mental illness, unless they see someone shouting at imaginary images, leads to more shaming. It's like Trump making fun of an obviously disabled reporter. Mental illness is invisible. People can't see it, so it not there. People with bipolar disorder are wildly successful artists, musicians, salesmen, authors. Unmediated, their behavior is wildly irratic. They self-medicate with drugs and alcohol. Johnny has a problem. But people only see and comment on the symptoms. The team might even know this, which is why they're hanging on despite the ridicule they're getting. They're likely trying to support him. But if he refuses to be med compliant (which takes time, bipolar people are famous for going on and off meds and in and out of hospitals) they have to let him go. People with bipolar lack perspective. Losing important things, repeatedly, help give them some perspective...eventually.

The problem in the US is that Trickle-Down is

...only deemed a problem when Republicans are in office. We are willfully blind to it when Democrats are in charge. We're just relieved to be in charge, so in the case of Trickle-Down, we don't hold Democratic Presidents to the same standard.

We finally have a choice in the upcoming election: more Trickle-Down or a paradigm shift. Until Democrats are capable of acknowledging their culpability and role in Trickle-Down, we don't appear ready for a paradigm shift. We'll know in a few months.

I will credit Democrats for coming around on Bill Clinton. More Democrats are critical of his economic policies, today. Maybe in a few years, more Democrats will feel the same about Obama.

translation: Hillary will be more effective than Obama, because Rs will work with her

That's the delusion Hillary is selling.



Obama pretty much cleaned up on the social agenda not leaving much for Hillary to accomplish. She has blood on her hands and loss of treasure going for her, so in that respect, she'll appeal to the Republican hawks. More war.

Hillary will play nice with WS and banksters. So she has that going for her, too. That seems important to her supporters.

Work with hawks and WS and banksters, that's what she means by continuing Obama policies.

Don't fool yourself. Neither will get their progressive goals accomplished in the next 4 years (period)

Bernie has to plant the seeds of a political revolution in his first term and hopefully we get the House and Senate back in 4 years to push his platform forward.

Hillary, meh, more of the same, but less. Like I said, Obama left her crumbs.

Exposing Tech's Competitive Advantage: Uber, Tech's Tax Shelter For The Millionaire Class

If you think Uber is anything but a legalized money laundering shell for its millionaire and billionaire investors, you should read up on how they avoid paying taxes.

Does tech really have a "competitive" advantage? Companies like Amazon and Uber have not only hastened the destruction of the middle class, but they've done so while, or because of, receiving government subsidies. The new brand Libertarian Democrats prosper in markets marked by distorted competition, creating an uneven playing field, and giving them a tremendous advantage over companies already in the marketplace. A misguided 1992 NDSC ruled that internet purchases were not subject to sales tax. Amazon received this subsidy for the next two decades while decimating livelihoods. It wasn't until 2015 that the subsidy was ended. By then, however, it didn't matter. Brick and mortar businesses were long gone. Venture capitalist and early investor in Amazon, Nick Hanauer, says he made millions off his investment, but Amazon didn't create jobs, it destroyed 1 million jobs.

Uber is the latest tech "big thing" thriving not because it's "technology," but because of the extraordinary corporate welfare it receives thus creating a distortion of competition in every economy it enters. Heavyweight investors, including Chicago mayor Emanuel's brother, Jeff Bezos, Goldman Sachs, and Microsoft, have the clout and deep pockets to maintain the uneven playing field over an industry in which cab drivers could once earn a middle class living. Unlike the 1992 internet sales law, Uber is the beneficiary of unsettled law. That could change in June 2016. A ruling against Uber will cripple the company that's little more than a tax shelter for its investors. Will a ruling against Uber be appealed for years? Likely. Will full-time, middle class workers survive a market place inundated with unregulated, 1099 part-timers before the law is settled. TBD. Corporate welfare more than anything drives tech companies, and they are job killing tax havens for the millionaire and billionaire class.

I thought we opposed welfare for billionaires.










http://fortune.com/2015/10/22/uber-tax-shell/

So why pick on Uber when this is standard operating procedure? Unlike, say Google, Uber has virtually no employees relative to its size. Since Uber is privately held, all data the public receives is filtered through its CEO. As a result, analysts refer to Uber data as "magical numbers." But according to its CEO, in 2014, when already valued at $40 billion, Uber had 550 full-time employees.

https://www.quora.com/How-many-employees-does-Uber-have-How-fast-is-that-number-growing




http://www.chicagonow.com/kelly-truth-squad/2015/10/thanks-rahm-property-tax-hike-uber-rules-will-soak-chicagoans-for-millions/

http://www.chicagonow.com/kelly-truth-squad/2015/10/angry-about-rahm-550-million-property-tax-hike-heres-an-uber-proposal/

http://www.chicagonow.com/kelly-truth-squad/2014/07/the-chicago-way-why-bruce-rauner-and-rahm-emanuel-are-really-helping-uber/

Introducing the Libertarian Democrat. Are You One?

Remember when liberals cared about wages, Social Security, Medicare, and fair competition? We'll, they don't anymore. Check your cell phone. If you have the Uber app or Airbnb app, you're part of the problem. It started with the internet behemoth Amazon. Amazon benefited from tax laws their lobbyists wrote precluding internet sales from sales taxes. That's fair competition, right? Remember book stores? Ask displaced owners of the now extinct brick and mortar bookstore if it’s fair. They may not have been as convenient, but they had employees. But Democrats don’t care about jobs anymore. Venture capitalist and early Amazon investor, Nick Hanauer, explains that "Amazon didn't create jobs, it probably destroyed 1 million jobs." While some industries have reached the point of no return, we need to fight fight to save existing jobs before they become extinct.

Wages have been stagnant since the 1970s. In lieu of raises, corporations have opted for ways to lower prices thus creating “proxy raises.” It works like this: seek lower wages and benefit expenses by exporting US jobs overseas, and introduce technology that allows companies to replace full-time employees with part-timers and contractors. This is today’s business model of multi-national corporations and upstart tech companies like Uber and Airbnb. By replacing full-time employees with part-timers and contractors, companies avoid employer expenses like paid vacation, Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment tax payments.

Since the Reagan administration, business, and its subsidiary, the main stream media, have been winning the war on organized labor. And they continue to win because Democrats take weekends, the 40 hour work week, Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment for granted. Democrats seem oblivious to the fact that, left to their own devices, corporations disregard human dignity.

Think about that next time you click on these apps.

Nick Hanauer on Income Inequality

Carlos Rosa rocks!

26 years old and smacking down the mayor at every opportunity while the others cower to protect their jobs.

Carlos will be our mayor someday.

?w=676

Thanks Uncle Joe. Then I'll take a crack at it from a marketing point of view...

First, corporations, especially conservative media, throw money away -- down the toilet -- often. They do this to quash liberal voices. Conservative media moguls are willing to buy up radio stations just to shut out liberal voices despite losing money in the process. This is also especially true of upstart tech companies. It's just an investment in their product from which they expect future returns. In the case of media, protecting the Republican brand and demonizing Democrats.

Second, as the internet grew, companies learned that traditional forms of advertising weren't as effective, not the same return for the investment, forcing them to change their advertising model. They didn't foresee this; the change followed the paradigm shift. Marketing guru's aren't that clever, they are reactive.

Third, there's the matter of the debates. From an advertising perspective, the Democratic debates are pretty much a loser relative to the Republican debates. With 16 Republican debates, as an advertiser, I wouldn't bother dumping anything into the Democratic debates. (Are we in the midst of a paradigm shift?)

Fourth, "debates" (which is a misnomer to begin with) are sporting events, nothing more. And like any sporting event, the officiating is as big a part of the post-game discussion as what was said. The networks are selling more than Trump. They have to sell inequity to make it all work. The only difference, of course, each candidate is declared the winner. I think this is just part of the trend we've witnessed since the mid-1970, and especially so since 9/11 (see below). Getting shut out is the ultimate inequity. So to learn about Bernie, people are turning to their trusted sources rather than having everything filtered through the M$M.

Which brings me full circle: Bernie is surging despite the media blackout, and this is my interpretation of that fact. It's counterintuitive only from an old paradigm point of view.

In the mid-1970s, when baby boomers were coming of age, about a third of high school seniors agreed that "most people can be trusted."

That dropped to 18 percent in the early 1990s for Gen Xers — and then, in 2012, to just 16 percent of Millennials.

The researchers also found that Millennials' approval of major institutions — from Congress and corporations to the news media and educational and religious institutions — dropped more sharply than other generations in the decade that followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/04/millennials-less-trusting-gen-x_n_5767564.html

A French philosopher might explain it thusly (and it's awesome)

(Roland) Barthes is a French philosopher who died in 1980. But his work may hold the key to understanding Trump’s popularity and his staying power.

Barthes is best known for his work in semiotics, the study of signs and symbols. But he wasn’t limited to lengthy, esoteric treatises. Rather, Barthes published much of his work in short, accessible pieces breaking down elements of popular culture. The New York Times described Barthes as the godfather of the TV recap.

His most famous essay, published in his 1957 book Mythologies, focuses on professional wrestling. Could an essay about professional wrestling hold the key to understanding Trump’s appeal? It’s worth noting that, before he was a presidential candidate, Trump was an active participant in the WWE. In 2013, Trump was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.

In his essay, Barthes contrasts pro wrestling to boxing.

This public knows very well the distinction between wrestling and boxing; it knows that boxing is a Jansenist sport, based on a demonstration of excellence. One can bet on the outcome of a boxing-match: with wrestling, it would make no sense. A boxing- match is a story which is constructed before the eyes of the spectator; in wrestling, on the contrary, it is each moment which is intelligible, not the passage of time… The logical conclusion of the contest does not interest the wrestling-fan, while on the contrary a boxing-match always implies a science of the future. In other words, wrestling is a sum of spectacles, of which no single one is a function: each moment imposes the total knowledge of a passion which rises erect and alone, without ever extending to the crowning moment of a result.

In the current campaign, Trump is behaving like a professional wrestler while Trump’s opponents are conducting the race like a boxing match. As the rest of the field measures up their next jab, Trump decks them over the head with a metal chair.

Others in the Republican field are concerned with the rules and constructing a strategy that, under those rules, will lead to the nomination. But Trump isn’t concerned with those things. Instead, Trump is focused on each moment and eliciting the maximum amount of passion in that moment. His supporters love it.

The key to generating passion, Barthes notes, is to position yourself to deliver justice against evil forces by whatever means necessary. “Wrestlers know very well how to play up to the capacity for indignation of the public by presenting the very limit of the concept of Justice,” Barthes writes.

Trump knows how to define his opponent — China, “illegals,” hedge fund managers — and pledges to go after them with unbridled aggression. If, in making his case, he crosses over a line or two, all the better.

For a pro wrestler, energy is everything. A wrestling fan is less interested in what is happening — or the coherence of how one event leads to the next — than the fact that something is happening. On that score, Trump delivers. He is omnipresent on TV. When he can’t make it in front of the camera, he’ll simply call in. When he’s not on TV, he’s tweeting boasts, insults, and non-sequiturs. When he runs out of things to tweet, he retweets random comments from his supporters.

Along those lines, Trump’s favorite insult — which he has employed repeatedly against Jeb Bush and, more recently, Ben Carson — is that his opponents are “low energy.”

Frenetic action is suicidal for a boxer, or a traditional politician. But Trump is not bound by those limitations. The crazier things get — Trump suggesting a popular Fox News host asked him a tough question because she was menstruating, for example — the more Trump’s supporters love it.

It is obvious that at such a pitch, it no longer matters whether the passion is genuine or not. What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself. There is no more a problem of truth in wrestling than in the theater.

This analogy reveals why the attacks on Trump are so ineffective. Recently, Rand Paul and others have taken to calling out Trump as an “entertainer,” rather than a legitimate candidate. This is as effective to running into the middle of the ring during Wrestlemania and yelling: “This is all fake!” You are correct, but you will not be received well.

He wanted ACA to be his legacy, so he...

gave up WS, TPP, and BushCo.

He was playing 3-D chess the whole time, but with liberals, not Republican pols.

Could Bernie be benefiting from the media blackout?

People are turning away from the M$M and to alternate sources for information. Follow your favorite sources on twitter and Facebook, and one has no need or time to turn on the tele except for entertainment. Political satire is both powerfully influential and ubiquitous; the Daily Show and The Colbert Report have managed to do what M$M can't: grow a trans-generational following. Since M$M's credibility has been plunging for years, and Bernie continues to surge, is he benefiting from the blackout?

Poll: News Media's Credibility Plunges (2009)
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-news-medias-credibility-plunges/


Thoughts?