They have been, and always will be, with us:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt9JpYRulSk

In news that will make you sigh and say, “well, shit” because you already all knew it, the 2009 census data shows that the gap between rich people and the poors is bigger than ever.  You are welcome to greet this news by either:

• Donning your suit made from diamonds and the skin of poor people, and dancing the foxtrot, for celebration.
• Wishing this news were printed on real paper, so you could burn it for fuel. You’ll  subsequently get kicked off the public library’s computer because that one librarian always thinks you’re masturbating, because sometimes you masturbate at the library, because it is a quiet refuge in your crowded shitstain of a life.  Because you are poor.
• Clinging to the last vestiges of middle class existence.  Wishing haplessly to be elevated into the ranks of the top 1%, but realizing you’ll probably die penniless and dirty, of scurvy or cholera or something.

Anyway, if you are part of the shrinking middle class, uh congratulations?

Census Finds Record Gap Between Rich and Poor [Yahoo]

Given the kerfuffle over the Florida preacher with the Yosemite Sam mustache who even Fred Phelps thinks is koo-koo pants, you may have missed this latest story guaranteed to inspire more fury directed at the US and its troops:

US soldiers ‘killed Afghan civilians for sport and collected fingers as trophies’

Five Army soldiers have been charged with the murder of three Afghan civilians, and seven more have been charged with covering up the murders and assaulting another soldier who attempted to report the murders to superior officers.

According to the allegations, after murdering the civilians, the soldiers cut off the fingers of the corpses as souvenirs, at least one of them allegedly kept a skull of one of the corpses, in shades of Abu Gharib they posed for pictures with the dead bodies, and then they stole and smoke the hashish that at least one civilian had with him.

The soldiers were part of a brigade stationed in Kandahar in 2009 through the spring of 2010.

But there’s more to the story.

Read more »

Rep. Mike McMahon (D-NY) has fired his reelection finance director after she compiled a list of more than 80 donors to McMahon’s opponent who she said are Jewish to the New York Observer. She provided the paper with a list of donors entitled “Jewish Money Q2.”

From the Observer: McMahon’s (former) finance director, Jennifer Nelson, who is Jewish, complied a list of Jewish donors to one of McMahon’s potential Republican opponents, an ex-FBI agent Mike Grimm.  A spokesperson for McMahon’s campaign told the Observer that Nelson identified the donors as Jewish because “she knows a lot of people in that community” and could recognize their names.

[SFL: Nelson? That sounds more like a shiksa name. Carry on.]

Read more »

“More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars are seriously delinquent… By contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lender.” [NYT]

Commercial loans ready to default, home loan resets, yet Geithner says all is well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CN3pzB5hjH0

Do not be fooled – we are in the eye of the storm, and we have miles to go before we sleep. Elizabeth Warren knows her shit – mark me.

“Bank of America Corp. and other banks are preparing new fees on basic banking services as they try to replace revenue lost to regulatory rules, in a push that is expected to spell an end to free checking accounts for many Americans… ‘Customers will have a choice,’ Bank of America Chief Accounting Officer Neil Cotty told analysts in April, of ‘bringing more relationships to us or paying a maintenance fee.'” [WSJ]