Keystone XL Pipeline Bill Is Successfully Blocked

Concerning this map - - green shades are good - - blue is average and purple is bad and hot pink is the worst.  As you can see- - China is one of the few places on the planet where inequity of income is as BAD as it is in the United States.  Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin must be turning over in their graves.  Michelle Bachman is famous for praising the fact that "We should pattern our employment environment more like Red China because there the workers don't have the sort of rights we have in this country".   How ironic it is that the most "True Red" communist country- - should have one of the most inequitable of economies.  As bad as people say that India is- - the United States is qualitatively WORSE than India is, with its cast system.

 The United States Senate successfully blocked the Keystone XL pipeline, and Senator Boxer tells us that the XL stands for extra lethal.  The final vote which I watched on C-Span was 59 to 41.  However most of the votes at the end were all “Ayes” and the last NO pushing it to 41 came significantly before the end.  This is a great victory for President Obama and the American people.  John Boehner was saying “It would be suicide for the President to veto such a popular piece of legislation.”   Unfortunately for John Boehner, he never got a chance to gloat over this.  Some of the advocates for the pipeline contradicted themselves.  In one breath they are saying “This oil will get to market regardless of the vote today”.  This is not true.  The tar sands people of Alberta need an outlet for their product, either west, south, or east.  They have none now.  They say they need this pipeline because “pipelines are safer than the railroad” and yet they unfurled a map showing all sorts of pipelines so I say “Why don’t they just use one of those many others”.  But they tipped their hand saying “The refineries of Port Arthur really NEED this oil to make big profits.”  But you don’t jeopardize the health of the American people for fifty permanent jobs and to generate profits for a smaller number of people than that, such as the Koch Brothers.  Of course the new senate will construct new legislation next year, but that will take time.  They complain that too much time has elapsed already since the first permit filing Sept of 2008.

The American people are Clueless according to Washington’s blog.  What are they clueless about?  Just how much income inequality there is in the world.  How much more do CEO’s make for example, than the average American worker?  Many people think it is thirty to one or forty to one at most.  And across all political lines they say that income inequality as extreme as what we have not is a bad thing.  But it isn’t 40 to 1 for executive CEO salaries but instead it’s 350 to one.  Of course this figure, along with gross income, gets more extreme all the time in terms of its inequity.  And yet people like Judy have trouble saying the words “equity” or “equality” thinking the whole concept is some socialist “redistribution of income” ploy thought up by Marx and Lenin.  But as you and I know, income and salary inequality has become more extreme throughout the six years of the Obama administration.  It’s gotten so bad that now some republicansx try a switcheroo in order to secure the “bub-bah” vote or something, saying that it’s due to the President’s own actions that the inequity is as bad as it is, just as President Romney (ha – ha) kept saying during the 2012 debate that if you had trouble paying back your student loan, it was all the President’s fault for “getting you into this mess” or whatever.  The American people are not only clueless about their own economic status- - but they are just as clueless about the workings of government.  Perhaps now with BOTH houses of congress AND the courts now clearly in the Republican corner- - whatever befalls them now- - they will have to just accept as the will of their own party, the Republicans.  So one would logically assume that in the next survey about “is America headed the right or wrong direction” they will jump at the opportunity to vote in the affirmative that “since we voted in November 2014 our will is being carried out.

One thing I myself was nearly clueless about was the extent to which American oil production has increased over the course of the Obama administration.  Among the states, Texas is still first in production but North Dakota is second.  But they don’t talk about jobs in Texas or opportunities there even though they are still number one - - because Texas is still a really economically messed up state with more crime, and uninsured, and people below the poverty line.  Saudi Arabia is still first in production but Russia is a close second and closing fast.  And the United States is third ahead of such countries as Mexico and Iraq.  I sure didn’t know that.  The biggest reason for the drop in oil prices now is that OPEC has been “broken” thanks in large measure to Vladimir Putin and his vast oil he uses to leverage advantage over other nations.  But also Saudi Arabia and OPEC is cutting prices in order to undercut production of our shale and natural gas obtained through hydraulic fracturing because THESE petroleum products require the base price of oil to be above eighty dollars a barrel in order to be profitable.  So it’s only logical that the Saudis being the good capitalists they are- - endeavor to drive our domestic producers out of business.  Now suddenly Rush is turning anti capitalist and accuse the Saudis of fighting dirty.  They are only engaging in the prime directive of capitalists of “Look out for number one” so he who espouses by the rhetoric of greed, will now suffer at the hands of others.  I don’t think Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity feel at all comfortable about whether their pet projects succeed or fail is in the hands of the Saudis.  I hope you all know that domestic producers are also just as greedy however.  Do you think THEY will sell the oil they produce for what their cost is plus a twenty percent profit?  Hell no!  They immediately put their products on the world market because they too profit- - from the past exploitations of OPEC.  They know that OPEC in the past has driven up petroleum prices way over what market value should be, and their aim is to cash in on it.  I hope nobody in North Dakota had fantasies of buying gasoline for two dollars a gallon or anything.  It’s never “OUR oil”.  They put it on the international market immediately.

Sean Hannity is in love with the idea of whites having an excuse to kill Black people.  He’s privately hoping for anything that can be called “disorder” so white cops can go nuts shooting Black protestors like fish in a barrel.  Actually video footage reveals Wilson was lying about his face, because he’s in better condition on the tape than he was telling people.  I take exception to how Sean Hannity has almost been cheer leading for the white "race" (as if such a race as "white" existed)  He turns it into some kind of a sports match saying the President is zero for three.  The President accused that cop who hassled a Black professor about getting into his own house saying the police "acted stupidly", which is the mildest way I would characterized how the police officers acted in that case.  Then the President struck out again - - as the theory goes when he said "If I had a son - I bet he would look like Trayvon Martin".  Now Sean Hannity - just as the media wants us to - - is assuming that the Ferguson grand jury will NOT indict Officer Wilson, which is probably accurate.  This would make President Obama 0 for 3 in Hannity's mind.  It's NEVER wrong to take a moral stance on an issue- - even if you lose.  If Sean Hannity had half the moral character he claims to have- - he's know this and never even make the analogy.  In terms of Health Care and the new contraversy there- - I'm not going to comment on that.  I'll let the facts sort themselves out on their own.  I know Hannity would LIKE certain facts to be true, but at least now, the mainstream Media isn't backing him up.

Inequality in the U.S. has soared in the last couple of years, since the Gini Coefficient was last calculated, so it is undoubtedly currently much higher.
So why are Egyptians rioting, while the Americans are complacent?
Well, Americans – until recently – have been some of the wealthiest people in the world, with most having plenty of comforts (and/or entertainment) and more than enough to eat. But another reason is that – as Dan Ariely of Duke University and Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School demonstrate – Americans consistently underestimate the amount of inequality in our nation.
As William Alden wrote last September:
Americans vastly underestimate the degree of wealth inequality in America, and we believe that the distribution should be far more equitable than it actually is, according to a new study. Or, as the study’s authors put it: “All demographic groups — even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy — desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo.” The report … “Building a Better America — One Wealth Quintile At A Time” by Dan Ariely of Duke University and Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School … shows that across ideological, economic and gender groups, Americans thought the richest 20 percent of our society controlled about 59 percent of the wealth, while the real number is closer to 84 percent.