Uppers and Eppers

This past Friday, the Dow Jones average, the NASDAQ, and the Standard & Poor's 500 all hit record highs - but while not indicative of a healthy economy for everyone (it's not the Dow's average that matters, it's yours), Trump can and does point to these numbers for evidence that the economy is sound.  That's enough to convinced overworked and underpaid Americans that there's greater opportunity and social mobility for them than there actually is, and Democrats seem unable to turn anyone on to the truth.  

Meanwhile, the Jeffrey Epstein story - the case involving the onetime Trump pal with having sex with minors - has brought down Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who got Epstein out of a jam back when he was the prosecutor in that case back in 2007.  Further investigation suggests that it might bring down Trump, though that remains to be seen.  I haven't really commented on this story because I think the story has commented on itself.  

Anarchy In the U.K. (and in the U.S.A.)

Riots have broken out in Great Britain over the unpopular austerity programs the coalition government led by Prime Minister David Cameron, with several blocks of houses and flats in some of London's poorest neighborhoods being set ablaze - or alight, as the locals would say. Gunfire and the throwing of Molotov cocktails and gunfire have been reported in neighborhoods such as Croydon and Tottenham. Similar unrest has been reported in Birmingham and Liverpool in the worst wave of riots since the late seventies and the early eighties. What usually happens in the United Kingdom usually happens in the United States next.

In America, the unemployed and underemployed middle-class seethe over a debt ceiling deal that rewards the wealthy and a President that proposes modest reforms to the tax code when bolder action is needed - Obama looks less Rooseveltian and more Cartereqsue by the day. The Dow Jones average plunged 634 points yesterday and the Republicans resist doing anything to create jobs that involve "government spending." Meanwhile, Wisconsin progressives are striving to get enough Republican state senators voted out of office in recall elections today to help the Democrats take over the Wisconsin State Senate and block the "reforms" of Governor Scott Walker in advance of an effort to have him recalled in 2012. Americans are getting angrier.

This is the season, stormy weather's on the way . . ..