“The state of our union is strong.” That’s what we were told during the State of the Union Address. To listen to the racist moron who is currently occupying the highest office in the land tell it, in just over one year, he has turned everything around. Everything is now great. This is it, folks! We are in a new Golden Age! Everyone’s taxes are going down (a lie), and finally AMERICA IS GREAT AGAIN! All it took was twelve months of putting people in charge of agencies who desperately want to destroy that agency, lying on a daily basis, attacking any journalist who dares print the truth about him, and retweeting and generally siding with white supremacists.

“Man of the People,” baby… He’s bringing this kind of winning to Washington, D.C. And he’s putting the “WHITE” back in the White House. #MAGA

It’s a simple plan, really… All’s you have to do is take all of the statistics about economic growth from the Obama presidency, and claim during the campaign that they are all “fake news.” It’s easy to lie to the scared, angry people at your rallies, and tell them all those statistics showing things actually ARE getting better are actually made up figures… Then, when you take office, magically those same agencies reporting economic growth become REAL news. Let’s take unemployment, for example. Here is video of an orange liar, claiming that the “REAL” unemployment rate is actually as high as 42%:

Meanwhile, today he is taking credit for the low unemployment rate that is getting reported… And suddenly those numbers are the gospel truth. As read from the gospel of “Two Corinthians,” I assume. It really is miraculous: When non-partisan groups report numbers while Obama is president, those numbers are fake… When they report the CONTINUING downward trend of unemployment during the first year of his presidency, THEN we can trust them. Just one month into his presidency, they proudly proclaimed that the job numbers went down to 4.9% (declaring that “They may have been phony in the past, but they’re very real now”). To take the unemployment rate from 42% all the way to 4.1% (for white people, that is) in just one year is truly the work of a Stable Genius.

And as further proof of his presidential prowess, we need only look at the stock market — That trusty ‘ol barometer of American success. And as long as the stock market keeps going up, everything is good… right? Well, for now we’ll leave alone the obvious and glaring hypocrisy of dismissing the dramatic increase of the stock market during Obama’s presidency. I realize that many folks have 401ks they are worried about, and it’s always nice when our retirement accounts go up in value. But half — that’s right, HALF — of the American public has almost no money in the stock market. The wealthiest top 1% holds more of America’s wealth than the bottom 90%… COMBINED. So how does that equate to the stock market? Here is an amazing, understandable, and (should be, at least) outrageous video explaining how America’s stock market wealth affects us. Even if you’ve watched it before, please watch it again…

“The top 1% own HALF the country’s stocks, bonds, and mutual funds… The bottom half own only .5% of these investments.” That’s half a percent. The bottom half of the wealthiest people in America only account for ONE HALF OF ONE PERCENT of the stock market’s value. So how does that affect America’s “working class?” You know, the ones who made a narcissistic megalomaniac the president of the United States? Well, here’s one way to look at it:

Let’s say there is a BILLION DOLLAR$ in the market (there’s so very much more than that, but just go with me here). That’s $1,000,000,000. Now, let’s say that market goes up in value by 50%… Making the value of the stocks/bonds/whatnot worth $1.5 billion dollars, and adding $500,000,000 in value. Because of who owns the stocks/bonds/mutual funds, $250 million of that gain is going to the richest one percent. While the bottom 50% of the ENTIRE COUNTRY (other than the MANY folks who are so poor they have no investments) split .5%… which works out to $2.5 million. I mean, congrats on your tiny 401k going up a bit, but every time the stock market increases, the wealthiest 1% of the people in this country get SIGNIFICANTLY wealthier than they were before that rise. Imagine a graph, where one line increases at a 50% rate, while another line increases at a .5% rate… Pretty soon the distance between the “Haves” and the “Have Nots” is so drastic, they are not even living in the same country.

Now, imagine a Supreme Court decision giving that wealthiest 1% UNLIMITED influence over financing the campaigns of candidates… And then you’ll understand why congress just passed a tax cut which will make wealth inequality in this nation So. Much. Worse. It gives those people with all that wealth even more, while drastically cutting the social safety nets for the nation’s poorest folks. It is —  and I don’t use this word lightly — an act of pure EVIL. But is is not only morally repugnant to have a system where “The average worker needs to work more than a month to earn what the CEO makes in ONE HOUR,” but it is dangerous to the very fabric of our democracy. Here’s one more short video to explain this danger:

When we have a natural and appropriate correction in the stock market as a result of unfettered greed and unregulated risk-taking (like we had in 2007-08), the reason the federal government pumps so much money in to correct it is because that money being lost belongs to the super rich… You know, the people who bought those politicians their positions. And after this bailout happens, when the wealthy see that the government is committed to a system which guarantees privatized/individual gains and corporate/community losses, OF COURSE the stock market is going to go up, Up, UP!!! That’s what happens when they have taken away much of the risk of putting money into a market… But they have done it at the expense of the further erosion of a society which is even remotely just or equitable.

It’s time to stop paying attention to the stock market. The stock market going up is NOT a sign of a better life for this nation’s poor and working class — Its a sign of an increasing inequality. When you celebrate the stock market going up, you are celebrating the acceleration of the expanding chasm between the rich and the poor. And just to be clear, if that is something you are celebrating while calling yourself a Christian, you might as well also celebrate the fact that you are completely full of shit… Just like this GOP administration.

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