Suggestive of a Problem (Righteous Rebel Remix)

Sometimes I think it really is just about action-hero fantasies imagining some good reason to kill people.

Glenn Beck’s radio program has been suspended from its SiriusXM simulcast after Beck described the election of Donald Trump as a “possible extinction-level event for capitalism” during an interview with a guest who suggested that a “patriot” will then need to “step up” and “remove him from office.”

During Wednesday’s “Glenn Beck Radio Program,” guest and conservative fiction author Brad Thor said he “guarantees” that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee would temporarily suspend the Constitution if elected president, calling the controversial candidate a “danger to America.”

“This could bring down incredible heat on me because I’m about to suggest something very bad―it is a hypothetical I’m going to ask as a thriller writer,” Thor said. “With the feckless, spineless Congress we have, who will stand in the way of Donald Trump overstepping his constitutional authority as President? If Congress won’t remove him from office, what patriot will step up and do that? If―if―he overstates his constitutionally-granted authority I should say as president, if he oversteps that, how do we get him out of office? I don’t think there is a legal means available. I think it will be a terrible, terrible position the American people will be in to get Trump out of office, because you won’t be able to do it through Congress.”

Instead of following up on Thor’s remark about Trump’s “removal” from office, Beck simply said he agreed before going on to say that he believed the economy would “reset” and decline “even if Jesus were in office.”

(Tesfaye)

A Quote: Blessed are the Whonow?

“Unhappy with the economic recovery in the United States? Could be worse.

“Specifically, we could be literally any other country in the world that also just went through a major financial crisis.”

―Catherine Rampell

‘Tis a fair point.

Seven years after the credit bubble burst, just two of the 12 countries that went through systemic financial meltdowns in 2007 and 2008 have reclaimed enough ground to reach their previous peaks in per-capita GDP: the United States and Germany. And Germany isn’t looking so hot these days, given that it’s teetering on the edge of deflation.

Many of the other countries that also went through “systemic crises” — as categorized by the work of Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff — still have years to go before fully recovering. The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Ukraine will likely wait until 2018 before reaching their pre-crisis peaks in per capita GDP, according to the International Monetary Fund. Even countries that didn’t technically experience a systemic crisis when we did (such as China and Japan) appear to be in serious trouble. As the Economist recently put it, the United States is looking increasingly like a “lonely locomotive.”

It is something to bear in mind when we hear people complain about the economy. However, the flipside is pretty straightforward, as well: The gains are all going to the top. The idea that the economy is flying has little visible effect in the daily lives of many workers, though they have jobs and ought to be thankful and all that other stuff that we are supposed to acknowledge in lieu of pointing out that even still many to most workers are existing under conditions of wage stagnation while already being underpaid. That the economy is flying is a great reason for your rent to go up, and, apparently, a terrible reason for your wages to increase.

Still, though, the numbers are there; we cannot blame everything on the government. Some of this we need private-sector executives to answer for.

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Rampell, Catherine. “How the U.S. economy got its mojo back”. The Washington Post. 1 December 2014.