Tea Party Gets Asses Whipped in Texas

Well it seems that the Eyes of Texas are no longer on some Tea Party challengers.

The show-stealer with national implications was the impressive victory of John Cornyn, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, over conservative Rep. Steve Stockman and six other Republican challengers. Cornyn, the one-time head of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, drew the challenge despite his solid conservative voting record and credentials. He rolled to victory with 61 percent of the overall vote – exceeding a high bar of performance set by many political experts.

At the same time, nine-term Republican Rep. Pete Sessions easily defeated his GOP primary challenger, Katrina Pierson, who was backed by FreedomWorks, a national Tea Party group.

So the Washington insiders beat the crazy Tea Partiers by a pretty wide margin as I expected. I hope Ted Cruz isn't getting too comfortable in his Washington perch right now. It looks more and more like the shutting down the government and threatening a destroying the world economy is turning out to be the Tea Parties Waterloo.

Target Finds a Person to Fall on Her Sword: That Person is Chief Information Officer Beth Jacob

In the words of Metallica: Do my dirty work, scapegoat. Do, do my deeds, for you're the one who's shamed.

Target said Jacob's resignation was her decision. But analysts say Jacob, who brought a series of technology initiatives to Target's stores and its website, was a scapegoat.

"Target has been obviously impacted. People are questioning Target's security. And she was the fall guy," said Walter Loeb, a New York-based independent retail consultant.

It doesn't matter to me if Tony Stark is their computer security person I will not buy anything from Target for any reason. You can't give up 40 million credit and debit card numbers when you pretty much sell the same thing I can buy from Walmart for cheaper.

Radio Shack Circles the Drain: Doesn't Matter to Me

It seems Radio Shack is going the way of Blockbuster as technology makes the store obsolete.

Much of what RadioShack used to stand for, the little esoteric electronics stuff you couldn't get anywhere else, can be (and should be) bought online. The economics of that stuff, as Radio Shack's increasingly death-spiral performance shows, simply doesn't pay. And they don't carry the stuff many of us want. And the sales help -- and this is a big generalization and no disrespect to the many hard working Radio Shack employees -- is hit-and-miss, at best.


I remember Radio Shack was the big bully in the 80s and now they are slowly dying. When Greenberg talks about the Radio Shack employees being poor I would have to agree with him. I remember back in the day when I was a little kid their employees shooing me away from their computers. I wasn't going to hammer the keys or have sticky fingers touching the mouse. I just wanted to interact with the technology that their were selling. The whole ordeal ended up making me against Radio Shack

In fact the only thing I had bought since then was a car charger for my phone when it was nearly dead. I probably could have bought it from Amazon but I needed it that day and Radio Shack was closer than Best Buy. I have never went back since and this was the early 2000s.

It just boils down to tech can be bought cheaper and more conveniently from Amazon. Best Buy is used as Amazon's showroom for tech and can be kept afloat by selling appliances. You still can't drop ship a refrigerator for anything close to a cheap price. But Radio Shack is just an anachronism from an earlier time and needs to go the way of Blockbuster.

Kremlin economic aide Sergei Glazyev Would "Crash" the US Economy if Sanctions are Brought Against Russia

Tough talk Glazyev but our economy is much stronger than you think.

He told the RIA Novosti news agency Russia could stop using dollars for international transactions and create its own payment system using its "wonderful trade and economic relations with our partners in the East and South."

Wait does he mean the Chinese? The Yuan is pegged to the dollar and they have trillions in bonds. If the Russians "crashed" the US financial system it would damage the Red Chinese as well. Also how would this payment system work? You won't be able to convert dollars into rubles? It's not like the rest of the world would stop using dollars because the Russians stop. It would effectively isolate their economy.

Russian firms and banks would also not return loans from American financial institutions, he said.

"An attempt to announce sanctions would end in a crash for the financial system of the United States, which would cause the end of the domination of the United States in the global financial system," he added.

Um, can you say capital flight? The Americans would not be the only ones to pull their money out of Russia. Who knows if the loans of the Red Chinese or the Australians will be the next to be defaulted on. There will be a run on Russian banks that you have never seen before. This would probably collapse these Russian banks and firms as foreign capital will run for the door. I hope the Russians are good at bailing out their banks.

He said that economic sanctions imposed by the European Union would be a "catastrophe" for Europe, saying that Russia could halt gas supplies "which would be beneficial for the Americans" and give the Russian economy a useful "impulse".

This doesn't make sense. It would probably get Europe to increase their buildup of LNG terminals and the natural gas boom in the US will be huge. This would be a great boon for the US economy. Um, thanks Russia you just made one of our big exports even more expensive. Some European nations like Poland will hurt but it won't be a catastrophe for anyone but the Russians. 

Putin Blinks: Rattles the Sabres but the Russian Market Crash May Have Been Too Much

I'm sure Putin is motivated by all sorts of delusions of grandeur but maybe his portfolio (or the portfolios of his ex-KGB cronies) got him to stand down.

Although Putin doesn’t really have much to fear in terms of retribution for making mistakes within his own country, the markets were giving him a different story, as Russia’s MICEX (MICEXINDEXCF.ME) index tumbled a whopping 10.8% yesterday. Recovery in markets abroad, and here in the states (^GSPC, ^DJI), have essentially brought us back to the status quo, something which Zachary Karabell of Envestnet felt was the most likely scenario.

Or conversely maybe he had a massive short trade on and made a quick 10.8% on his billions by essentially using his military to scare the markets. I have a feeling that the MICEX version of the SEC is not as powerful in Putin's Russia so that kind of chicanery might be possible. He probably has money in the US Stock market as well and had a chance to catch the downward move and the recovery as well.

Putin also had a chance to take the temperature of the world while playing the "Great Game" to rebuild a Russian Empire. He pretty much invaded his neighbor using Hitler's Austrian Gambit (I'm protecting ethnic Germans I mean Russians) and all the world did was condemn it in the strongest possible terms.

There were no economic sanctions or aircraft carrier movements by the US. The EU just stamped their feet and did not come to the financial or military aid of the Ukranians. The UN didn't censure him or do much of anything substantial. Putin could have ordered his troops to seize the country and annex it and there would have been no real consequences by the rest of the world.

Now if he is as devious as I think he is, Putin's next plan would be to partition the country using the UN as a tool. His excuse will be "protecting the interests of the Russian minority." Then he creates a satellite of the eastern half of the country with a puppet strongman in place. After all, getting half of a country for free is better than a war of aggression for the whole thing. All the satellite countries but none of that worthless rebuilding that the US has to do all the time.

Russia has loved a buffer zone of countries between it and Europe going back to Peter the Great. So Putin the Great (or Putin the Terrible?) is forming his own in 2014. It is sad that Putin is playing chess in the "Great Game" and the rest of the world is playing Chutes and Ladders.

Dems Might Lose the Senate According to This Poll

It seems that Obama might be a lame duck with two years to go on his second term.

Republicans have a large, 8-point advantage among voters in states with Senate races, according to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll released Tuesday.

Democrats hold a slight edge in the overall generic congressional ballot. But in the key battle for the Senate, Republicans lead the generic ballot by a 50-42 margin in states with a 2014 Senate race.

Republicans need to pick up six seats in November to retake control of the Senate, something that could instantly make President Barack Obama a lame duck president of sorts in his last two years.

Well Obama can still be weak and ineffectual in foreign policy. I wonder if the Dems will be sad that the only real thing to come out of the Obama years is a flawed health insurance law that almost everyone hates.

Movie Review: Pompeii: Avoid It

Well I saw another bad movie this past week. I was actually excited to see this one because I have studied Pompeii since I was a kid and read this extremely good book The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found. I was strait-up disappointed and I think this movie might kill Roman movies for a while. Hopefully, sword and sandal (which is one of my favorite genres) will be kept going if 300: Rise of an Empire kills it this coming weekend. 

So I was really all set to be taken back to AD 79 through the power of movie magic and CGI. Unfortunately I got a lot of Jon Snow from Game of Thrones (Kit Harington) and a very weird looking woman (Emily Browning) and their various travails. We also have Kiefer Sutherland hamming it up as a Roman General turned Senator who wears his armor everywhere for some reason. He also does this hopeless, affected British accent. It goes to show you that Brits can do American accents but almost never the other way around.

The movie for the most part establishes that Jon Snow is the Celt who is the last of some unnamed horse tribe killed off by Kiefer Sutherland and a sinister looking guy that slightly resembles Anthony Weiner. John Snow is the lone survivor and he becomes a gladiator. Hmm I think there was a movie with a better actor in it called the Gladiator that had a similar plot. In fact we even have a scene where he moves up because he is a badass but goes to Pompeii to fight instead of Rome. Oliver Reed's ghost did not appear.

Well Jon Snow eventually gets to Pompeii but on the road he meets up with Browning when her horse breaks his leg. Well Snow is a bad-assed horseman and euthanized the horse making Browning all sympathetic to him. The two actors did not have very much chemistry so it pretty much amounted to there was writing some where in the script that said "John Snow falls in love with Browning, hijinks ensue"

There is some fighting and a black gladiator is introduced played by Adabisi from Oz (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) who meets up with Russell Crowe I mean John Snow. They become friends while boasting how they will kill each other in the ring. I am just so tired of how gladiators in Hollywood are portrayed in such an a-historical manner. They rarely slaughtered one another and were highly trained warriors that cost big money to maintain. They were, in many ways, like MMA fighters (but even more popular) that used deadly weapons. If you owned a Gladiator school you rarely wanted your trained fighters to die in the ring if you could help it. That was the job of criminals and Christians and such not someone that could potentially make you rich. There is no way that a resort city like Pompeii would have had a bunch of fights to the death in their Arena.

In any case the Gladiators are brought to the house of Browning's parents where they are on display for a roman dinner. Of course it wasn't a true Roman dinner which would have been cool to see on the big screen. Instead it was just some background for the two wooden leads to "fall in love" in front of. Also they establish that Sutherland and Browning were an item (kind of) when she was visiting Rome for some reason or another. Jon Snow steals a horse and other nonsense and he is caught and has to fight in some rigged match instead of Sutherland just killing him.

So the next day instead of Jon Snow fighting Adabisi for "hiiis Freeeedom!" they have to fight a bunch of gladiators dressed as Roman soliders in front of a paper-mache menhir with a spiked collar surrounding its top. I swear it got nabbed from a Warhammer Fantasy Khorne diorama. They even had a True Detective-istic swirl on it to make the derivative-ness complete. The whole set just looked awful and stupid and the entire battle scene just looking like it was taken off the cutting room floor of Gladiator. I especially liked the super dull blades that popped up throughout the movie.

Right after the fight is when Vesuvius blows its top and we go from Gladiator to Volcano without Tommy Lee Jones in 5 seconds. The mountain exploding and the disaster scenes were quite good so I can't fault it here. Lots of fleeing Romans and pyroclasts and the little known part where there was a tsunami that was caused when the mountain blew. In this part people run around, Adabisi saves some kid, and there is a hackneyed chariot chase between Sutherland and Jon Snow. We even have a slow motion death of the slave friend of Browning played by Brit actress Jessica Lucas. Um, quick someone tell the director that there weren't only black slaves in Rome. In fact, they were kind of a rare sight because they would have to have come from thousands of miles away.

In any case the acting was wooden and Kit Harington pretty much has only one expression through the whole movie. Browning was a non-factor and I liked her much better in Sucker Punch. In fact she actually looked like a different person in that movie. Someone had to point out it was the same actress. I was like "wait the beautiful girl from Sucker Punch is this emaciated waif?" I immediately thought "I hope it is just Hollywoods "thin-mania" and not heroin or something sinister like that. Well bottom line is if you want Pompeii read that book I sited above and skip this Gladiator retread full of terrible acting and stupid looking fighting.

  


 

Ellen's Oscar Selfie is Priceless

Well it seems this picture broke Twitter for a little while.

The best part is Kevin Spacey making a funny turtle face in the background. Also it seems that half of Jared Leto's face is cut off as well. It is an interesting and candid moment from the Oscars that seemed to go nearly an hour overtime. I think Ellen did a great job as Oscar host.

Also bring back the olden day Oscar setup where the stars sit at tables and can eat and drink. Having them sit in a big auditorium just looks weird and I bet everyone is starving by the time they get to the various parties. I think the Golden Globes have it right. The stars are more relaxed and can have more fun and can get liquored up if they want. For the Oscars you have to have manufactured fun from Ellen to break the tension in the room.

Warming Slowdown Temporary Say Scientists

It seems that it is the pause that is refreshing.

Since an exceptionally warm 1998, there has been "a short-term slowdown in the warming of Earth's surface," Britain's Royal Society and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences said in a report.

But, they said, that "does not invalidate our understanding of long-term changes in global temperature arising from human-induced changes in greenhouse gases."

Instead of trying to use scare tactics to keep developing countries from achieving first world status why don't these scientists study why there was a short-term slowdown. Maybe that slowdown can be repeated or it could be sustainable. Instead we just have assurances that warming will continue some time in the future maybe. That is a flimsy basis to give billions of dollars to despots seeking an end to climate change.

Now the NSA is Stealing your Yahoo Web Chat Photos and Giving Them to the Brits?

I'm sure they have endless terabytes of naked selfies to comb through looking for terrorists.

How invasive was this program? According to leaked documents obtained by The Guardian, “in one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery — including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications — from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.” The documents show that GCHQ began bulk data collection from Yahoo online video chats because “Yahoo webcam is known to be used by GCHQ targets.”

I'm sure Mary Anne and her BF web chatting while he is away on a band field trip to the Idaho Famous Potato Bowl in Boise is a matter of national security. Maybe she is secretly an Al-Quida sympathizer. So NSA Chief Clapper needs to make sure what color her bra is and how many New Edition posters she has on her wall. 

I love that half-assed "I no longer care" reasoning the GCHQ had as well. Al-Quida is known to use Yahoo video chats so we need to record every single one just in case. It is like saying "Al-Quida uses hard drives so we need to download every kilobyte of data generated in the world" just in case. Maybe this will finally get some people to raise up when they realize that there is some NSA database somewhere that has their naked selfies all ready for some NSA spook to ogle.

The Last Time the Cubs Won the World Series The Ottoman Empire Still Existed

These 8 historical facts are just so funny.

The Chicago Cubs haven't won a World Series since 1908. This was back when there were still teams such as the Brooklyn Superbas and the Boston Doves. The Ottoman Empire, which was founded in the 13th century, also existed back then. Mehmed VI was the last sultan of the empire and his reign ended in 1922 when the sultanate was abolished and the Turkish government took governing control over the new republic -- 14 years after the Cubs last won the World Series.

So the Cubs won and 14 years later the Ottoman Empire fell? Coincidence? I think not.

Even the Uninsured Are Against Obamacare

It sucks when the people that the law is supposed to help ie the 30 million uninsured are against Obamacare for the most part.

Fifty-six percent of those who identified as uninsured in a new poll conducted in February by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a research institution, had an unfavorable view of the health care reform law, compared to just 22 percent who said they view it favorably. The uninsured now see Obamacare less favorably than they did when the enrollment period began in October. As recently as September, more uninsured approved of the law than disapproved. 

What do you expect when these people are supposed to buy insurance at $2000 a year or get fined and the subsidies are given to them on their tax returns. The revenues and the expenditures do not match up and that is a problem.

Google Fiber to Expand to 34 Cities

It seems that Google is going all in on its coming battle with the Telcos.

Google has avoided FiOS markets altogether (not to mention colder-weather climes that would make fiber construction more costly), instead picking areas that fall within AT&T, Comcast and Time Warner Cable footprints. If Google does pull the trigger, the expansion won’t be cheap: Deploying fiber in all 34 cities would cost between $2.2 billion and $3 billion, Sanford Bernstein senior analyst Carlos Kirjner estimated.

Kirjner believes Google Fiber is what Google says it is: a major opportunity. Within six years, Google Fiber could reach 40 million homes and serve 20 million broadband customers — and yield $20 billion in annual revenue, by his math. The capital-intensive characteristics of Google Fiber are divergent from the parent company’s high-margin, cash-cow search-advertising biz, but that doesn’t mean it can’t work.

I think it might be a good idea to spin-off Google Fiber because the capex on telcom is always insane and it would bring margins down for the parent. In any case when Google Fiber eventually comes to Hawaii I will be signing up because the speed is insane and they will probably price very low in order to battle the Telcos.

Mt. Gox Disappears Overnight: Glad I have Stocks and Bonds and Not Bitcoin in My Portfolio

This is kind of like the New York Stock Exchange or ICE disappearing overnight.

The website of Mt. Gox suddenly went dark on Tuesday with no explanation, and the only activity at the company's Tokyo office was outside, where a handful of protesters said they had lost money investing in the virtual currency.

Hours later, Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles told Reuters in an email: "We should have an official announcement ready soon-ish. We are currently at a turning point for the business. I can't tell much more for now as this also involves other parties."

He did not give any other details.

The Tokyo-based Mt. Gox had halted withdrawals earlier this month after detecting "unusual activity," and on Sunday Karpeles resigned from the board of the Bitcoin Foundation, the digital currency's trade group.

Yup the NASDAQ closed all trading today and shut down their website and their CEO said "stocks are at a turning point; we'll have an announcement soonish." I am so glad I dodged this scam in the making. I guess this is the reason why stocks are backed by corporations and treasuries are backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. We might be trillions in debt but the bond market won't shut down with a "we'll have more information soonish" tacked on the door. 

An Actual Compassionate Conservative? Arthur Brooks of the AIE Welcomes the Dalai Lama

It seems that the Dalai Lama actually had a chance to sit down with conservatives and have a debate about capitalism. Maybe the idea that conservatives actually want to help poor people might come around at last.

Brooks was solicitous of his holy guest. “Free enterprise truly can be and should be a blessing in the life of all people, especially the poor,” he assured the Dalai Lama, but “it will not be if it’s not executed and practiced on the basis of brotherhood and compassion.” 

A conservative calling for compassionate capitalism! This was encouraging. 

I guess all that talk of makers vs takers and the 47% that are addicted to the government is starting to wear off. Capitalism has the potential to help quite a few people come out of poverty than any other economic setup.

The Red Chinese is case-in-point. Communism was a dismal failure that killed off tens of millions of people. Capitalism is is helping quite a few people go from nearly subsistence farming to a comfortable middle class. It is command capitalism but it is far better than anything Mao tried to do.

There are people left behind by capitalism and I think its the job of the government working with civic and religious groups to help them out. So job training at the local church, or free suits donated by Jos. E. Banks for perspective job applicants, and resume help from the Chamber of Commerce. That way a person can find a job and contribute to the economy rather than relying on welfare etc.

I Agree with Ashley Wagner: Figure Skating is Rigged

I thought falling down was bad and eliminated you from the podium but I guess not.

Wagner's total of 193.20 was 7.37 points behind that of Lipnitskaia, the Russian sweetheart who won the hearts of the host nation with a pair of performances that helped win gold in the team competition. That was despite Lipnitskaia's falling heavily on both nights and being visibly dismayed at her performance once she left the rink after her free skate.

So the Russian won even after falling twice? She should have not even been close to the podium especially after Wagner didn't fall even once. I'm sure Putin had the families of the judges in the Russian sphere of influence put up in a special villa full of luxuries. If the judges scored it the "wrong way" they would have been cleaning blood off of the marble floors. According to this some of the judges were crooked as well.

Two of their replacements were Ukrainian Yuri Balkov, who was kicked out of judging for a year after being tape-recorded by a Canadian judge trying to fix the Nagano ice dancing competition, and Alla Shekhovtseva, a Russian judge who is married to Russian federation general director Valentin Pissev. The two other new long program judges were from Estonia and France, which was the country that conspired with Russia to try to fix the pairs and ice dancing competition at the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City.

Why doesn't a judge that tried to fix the Nagano ice dancing still able to judge in the Olympics? Also one of them is married to the head of Russian skating? That is such a rig job it isn't even funny. Forget this crooked-assed Olympics.

Google Fiber a Game Changer? Welcome to the Googleverse

I was reading this article about Google Fiber and would love to have it in Hawaii ASAP.

Google (GOOG), which has market capitalization of about $405 billion (plus $60 billion in cash, plus a derelict blimp hangar), just announced it’s expanding its fiber network rollout, which Netflix consistently clocks as the speediest in the sector. Google Fiber claims to be 100 times faster than the typical household broadband connection—good enough to download an entire HD flick in half a minute.

First of all this will shatter Gamestop because the only thing slowing down digital downloads of entire games is how long it takes to download them. If that barrier is taken away (or the game streams somehow) then the physical game on DVD goes the way of the game cartridge. I agree with this assessment as well:

Some on Wall Street seem to think so. “Google Fiber is an attempt by Google to build a profitable, stand-alone business,” Carlos Kirjner of Bernstein Research wrote in a Wednesday research report. “It may not make a huge difference for Google or for the incumbents in the next one, two or three years, but Google is taking the long view and we think in five or more years, it could turn out to be a significant, profitable business for Google and headwind for incumbents.”

They want to have your entire digital life be dependent on Google which is a pretty good business model. They want every search to be from Google, every song played off of Google Play Music, every Office Document to be made with Google Docs, all of the your files stored on Google Drive, and have your connection to the Internet be through Google Fiber.

I have a feeling too that once Google Fiber is rolled out they will start a wireless service as well. If you think about it Google could cut out the telecom industry altogether. You could use Skype (or a Google version of it) for calls, Snapchat or Google Messenger for texts, and Google Wireless to access the Internet. That pretty much cuts out the telecoms for anything other than subsidizing the cost of phones. Why would you sign up with AT&T or Verizon for 2 years when you can connect your smart phone to the Internet at much faster speeds?

It seems that Google wants to have end to end control of your entire digital life. They just bought out Nest so that they can have your house plugged into Google as well. Your refrigerator will connect to Google Fiber to tell your Android phone that uses Google Wireless that you need to throw out that bad milk. Welcome to the Googleverse.

Liberal Snobs Through History

This article articulates why I dislike the so-called "liberal elite" that seems to always know how to spend my money better than I do.

The novels of Sinclair Lewis, the journalism of H.L. Mencken and the literary criticism of Van Wyck Brooks heaped scorn on the vast and supposedly mindless Americans who worked hard at their jobs and joined civic groups -- Mencken's "booboisie."

These 1920s liberals idealized the "noble aspiration" and "fine aristocratic pride" in an imaginary Europe, and considered Americans, in the words of a Lewis character, "a savorless people, gulping tasteless food," and "listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the excellence of Ford automobiles and viewing themselves as the greatest race in the world."

Liberals are always looking to Europe as a bastion of enlightened thinking but seem to ignore the fact that Americans do not want to be taxed at 70% - 90% so that some other person can get freebies. We are a lot more German in our attitude that we don't want to work our asses off so some Greek guy can sleep in the sun. Liberals of course also ignore the racism and rampant classism in parts of the continent.

 

Also Lewis' ideas about Americans seem to be the seedling for the idea of "flyover states." Like the vast majority of Americans are simply filling the space between the enlightened bastions of liberalism like Seattle, Berkley, San Francisco, New York etc. Most middle class Americans are "savorless people" clinging to our guns and God and need to be led by the hand by an intelligent liberal technocracy that knows what is best for them. How do you expect to lead people you have such contempt for?

This is also why liberals have a hard time with the idea of American exceptionalism. Deep down they think America is a hateful, racist place where the rich and corporations smash the common man. They see us as warmongers that slime the world with our pop culture. Everything that some other country has is great even though they ignore the deep problems in those countries. Liberals deep down don't like Americans as they are now and want to change them into something they will never willingly become.

It Seems Americans Do Not Care About Immigration Reform

I think pocketbook issues are much more important to most Americans.

This year, Americans didn’t put immigration as high on their list of importance as some in Washington have, at least according to a Gallup poll released on January 16. Given 19 issues rated as extremely important, very important, moderately important, or not important at all, Gallup found that those who viewed immigration as extremely or very important for Congress and the president in 2014 was near the bottom of the list, at 50 percent.

It fell below everything from the economy to education and health care. It was below crime, taxes, “the distribution of income and wealth,” and gun policy in terms of importance. The only things that those polled found less important for the coming year were government surveillance, abortion, race relations, and LGBT policies.

What is bad though is government surveillance is so low on the list. I guess if the government avoids the issue long enough Americans will forget and the police state will be firmly in place.

Dems Can't Figure Out Why People Like Their Issues But Don't Like Them: It's the Aspiration Stupid

Well it seems that the Dems just can't understand why most of their issues have broad support but it doesn't translate into liking the party.

Democrats disagree on how to discuss the growing divide between high-income earners and middle-class workers whose wages have largely stayed flat for many years. One top Democratic lawmaker, who would discuss the sensitive issue only on condition of anonymity, said he is incensed when his party's candidates denounce "income equality," because many voters see it as contrary to the American dream of advancing and benefiting from hard work.

Yet Biden jumped right in Friday. "They talk about the fact that we shouldn't be talking about income inequality," he told House Democrats. "I think it would be a sin if we didn't talk about income inequality."

When he was elected to the Senate in 1972, Biden said, "a CEO made about 25 times more than the lowest-paid employee." Now, he said, it's 240 times greater.

This is exactly why the Dems argument falls flat on a majority of Americans. No one cares if the CEO makes 240 times more than the lowest-paid employee because the majority of Americans will not tolerate being the lowest-paid employee for very long. They want to rise up the ladder and maybe if they work hard enough become the CEO themselves. It is rare but several corporations sport CEOs who used to have entry level jobs at the company.

So whenever the Dems talk about income inequality they go after something that many Americans aspire to become. One reason a person I know didn't join the Occupy Movement even though he was of the right demographic and is a liberal is because he wanted to eventually be one of the 1%. Why would you march against something you aspire to become?

So when the Dems talk about getting back at the rich or giving freebies to the poor it short circuits the idea that if you work hard you will get ahead. I mean most Americans don't want or need handouts or want any hostility from Dems once they actually attain some sort of wealth. They want a safety net in place but hope to never have to use it.

So whenever Biden talks out of his ass about CEO pay people tune him out. Americans probably won't make 240 times more than the lowest paid person at their company but there is a decent chance they will be able to make 20 or a 30 times it instead. They see Biden and the Dems standing in their way of achieving just that.