Welcome to The Now

 As in, "America deserves an out-of-touch Reagan Democrat throwback from the 80s because we can't tell the difference from an authoritarian posing as a conservative populist and a left-of-center economic populist who the media labeled as a Marxist." After explicitly demanding a political shift by first electing an African-American Senator and than a rich celebrity with no political background into the White House, we have come full circle back to "politically palatable white guy," as if Biden spent 40 years of his life trying to improve the lives of the poor, the working class and/or minorities (hint: his policies either ignored those groups or made their lives worse).    But I digress. Apparently the story of the day is about Biden calling the GOP " vastly diminished in numbers" with a "fractured" leadership , instead of "Biden stumbles to answer a simple question, dismisses Trump's actions and expresses hopes for the opposition par

 For those who downplay the violence that did occur, or argue that what happened amounted to little more than a visit that became rowdy, I have a simple question: "Why didn't any Congressperson invite these 'guests' inside to witness a peaceful transfer of power?" If they were never a threat, than those in Congress who are defending them should have invited them inside. If their presence was sanctioned, the police should have (1) allowed them inside and (2) had enough staff to accommodate their "visit."

  Not a surprise really . The question is, "Why hasn't Congress changed the tax laws so the wealthy can start paying their fair share?"

  Cause and Effect : When West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) announced his decision last month to cut federal unemployment benefits for his state’s jobless residents , he pointed to what he said was a plethora of openings for those who needed work. “West Virginians have access to thousands of jobs right now. We need everybody back to work,” he said on May 14. “We’ve got to have you back to work. America is all about work. That’s what has made this great country." Justice didn’t need to look far for examples of companies struggling to hire workers. The storied West Virginia resort he owns, the Greenbrier, has been looking for dozens of new employees in recent weeks and until recently had received far fewer applications than normal. But after Justice announced his decision, that started to change, said Kathy Miller, vice president of human resources at the luxury hotel. “ Fortunately the applicant pool has started to improve, so we’re very happy about that ,” she said in an intervi

 So the former president was banned from Facebook and Twitter. Not the most democratic of moves, even considering the large role he played on the events of January 6th, 2021. Nevertheless, it was a move that had a profound effect: without access to the two most widely used social media mediums, an influential celebrity and politician was all but neutered.   Sure he decided to go elsewhere and continue voicing his opinion on everything important to him (hint: himself) on what could be accurately described as a blog, but apparently it wasn't enough . Apparently, he has plans to move to another platform, but time will tell. As nice as it may be to not have the media report on the tweets of the former president, the fact that banning him had such a profound impact on his messaging, the fact that the banning process was fairly arbitrary, and the fact that literally anyone can now be banned at any time for any justifiable reason, makes the power social media hold truly disturbing.  

 Much of the alleged in-fighting amongst the Left in America deals with the online personalities not liking each other because of (a) the level of attention they place on a particular policy, (b) their approach to getting a policy implemented, or (c) the actual personality of the other person. That said, there is one issue that the Left must address, whether or not they actually come to an agreement: the role of electoral politics. At the very least, there are four general camps: The "Take Over One of the Two Major Parties" Camp The "Create Our Own Party" Camp The "Just Focus on the Local" Camp The "All Parties Are Evil" Camp TAKE OVER ONE OF THE TWO MAJOR PARTIES. The argument is essentially: Creating a viable party from scratch costs too much in terms of time, money and resources in order to enact the policies we want given the limited time frame ( because the earth is doomed; forgot to mention that constant ) so we need to focus on taking over