Ned's economics lesson

Ned would like to explain today's economy to his many freinds. We are all familiar with the dreary numbers: high unemployment, concentration of wealth in the hands of the Sneering Plutocracy and the Paris Hilton Crowd, GOP Mindless Midgets in charge of the House, and de facto the Senate. Obama has been unable to move the economy off dead center, mainly because of (1) timidity and (2) GOP knuckledragging, neither of which is likely to go away. But here's the simple explanation to the sluggish eonomy: CORPORATE PROFITS EQUAL 12% OF GDP. Now what's so bad about that? First, corporations are sitting on most of that cash and not investing it, or paying it "out" in dividends, or heaven forbid, paying their employees below the level of Sneering Plutocrats. Second, the money they do spend goes to salaries for Sneering Plutocrats, who can't possibly spend all of their filthy lucre, so it does not go back into the economy. Just recall Mitt Romney's offshore accounts. So, while the middle class stagnates, and the GOP plays its obscene game, the Plutocracy hoards cash like the Dragon of the Nibelung.
Ned hopes his friends have a very nice day.

Self-centered jackasses, v. XXV

In Ned's Money mag that came today he found a letter from some idiot who said, in response to a query about how one handles children of friends who try to sell one junk food like cookies "for a good cause:"
"Here's how I handle it (smugly). I buy the stuff and then give it away to the lowliest workers at my firm. It makes me feel good, helps the kids and I KNOW the poorly paid employees appreciate it."
Ned rubs his hands in glee at the very thought of this clueless, smug, self-centered, insolent meathead (from Texas--where else?) and begins to see how why our poor tend to be more obese than the wealthy.  

The Latest Shooting Outrage and Mitt Romney

We will not launch another of our famous thunderbolts concerning this latest outrage, having already determined Amerikkka to be certifiably sociopathic. The fact that an Empty Suit like Mitt Romney could be a viable candidate for the presidency is even worse. A man who has amassed $100 million in an IRA? A man with a 55-page addendum to his tax return describing his foreign holdings? 'You beatin' up on a man? You puttin' a man in the hospital!? How come I don't see no marks on you?!

The American "Diet?"

Ned's friends will be glad to know that Americans will consume more toxic junk food on the 4th of July than any other day of the year, according to Bloomberg. Here's the loathsome lineup:  barbecue staples comprise 'lean' ground beef, WHITE bread, American 'cheese,' iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, ice cream and potato chips. Only tomatoes are nutritious and most of them will no doubt be conventional, slathered with pesticides, and eventually thrown away anyway.
Health care debate, anyone?

Parallels?

In 1942, the Nazis exterminated the tiny village of Lidice in the Czech Republic, murdering 142 men and sending children and women to sure death in concentration camps, because partisans executed the head of the Gestapo or some such loathsome organization, Richard Heydrich. In 2009, in response to Fatah "insurgents""kidnapping" a lone Israeli soldier, Israel let lose a horror on the defenseless Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated urban areas on earth, bombarding it with rocketry and bombs, killing hundreds of civilians and as many as 300 children.
Parallels?