Wealth Inequality in America

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I don’t know how in the world we’re supposed to fix it, but I think this video makes it pretty plain as day that wealth inequality is a major problem here in the United States. We’re long past those who work harder earn more – it’s become somewhat of a cliche, but we really are in times where the rich keep getting richer and the poor are poorer than ever.

I’ve never said that the CEOs of corporations don’t deserve more than the average workers in their offices, but it’s not good for our economy as a whole to see that gap growing wider and wider with the top 1% hoarding such a ridiculous percentage of the nation’s wealth. We argue about the costs of healthcare and how so many American citizens can’t afford to go to the doctor when they’re sick, yet we’ve got such a minuscule amount of the population sitting on veritable mountains of wealth – sure, it’s great for the folks at the top, but it’s clearly detrimental to those at the bottom, and eventually it makes you wonder if some of that wealth was spread out across the bottom 80% of the country instead of all stagnating at the top, maybe we wouldn’t find ourselves bickering back and forth about taxpayer money funding universal healthcare because a) anyone with a job would be making more money and in a better position to afford it, and b) there’d be more jobs to begin with…

Of course, the problem is how do you actually do it???

You can’t force the wealthy to start being more generous – that’s socialism, and even arguing for increased taxes to funnel it away via social programs is typically met with disastrous results.

You certainly can’t just hope that they’ll be generous on their own – some will, but just like how saying, “If Warren Buffet wants to pay more taxes, let him write a check!” isn’t nearly as effective as everyone with wealth paying higher taxes, only the generous few opening their wallets will simply be drops in the bucket anyways.

I don’t know enough about economics to know what our other options would be, but it’s the kind of thing that honestly makes me start to wonder if “the free market” has really been the best system for America in the long term after all … though I’m sure many would argue that it’s not exactly “free” when there are politicians to be bought. Capitalism has created some incredible achievements throughout our society and with them some extraordinarily successful people, but what do you do about all of the rest??? That number of folks being crammed into the far left of those scales is growing larger and larger, and it’s simply not good enough to just say “They’re lazy – they need to work harder!” anymore.

One thing that I think could make this video even more effective would be an interactive way for the viewer to identify where they actually fall within those graphs because not for nothing, but my hunch would be that just like most people believe that they’re above-average drivers, most probably also believe that they’re in what they consider to be the middle class. Not sure what it takes to open people’s eyes to this rift, but even when you do, who among us is actually in a position to do anything about it???  😕

Daily Garden Update – A New Home…

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I finally got some pots!  8)

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And one thing’s for sure, after how much I spent at Lowe’s on pots and potting soil and a new watering can and whatever those metal things for them to climb on are called, it’s gonna be a lot of cucumbers and tomatoes before I ever end up in the positive on this whole vegetable gardening adventure!

Admittedly I’m a little nervous now to see how they take to their new environment because as you can see in the picture, they’ve definitely gone from overgrowing their previous terrarium to now being the little fish in the new dirt pond. I also really wasn’t able to separate them much because their roots were so mixed together – I cut them apart just to separate the two types of vegetables, but that was about it. Honestly, I probably put way too many seeds in the terrarium a few weeks ago in the first place … you can kind of see how they’re a little on top of each other, but I guess now we’ll just have to wait and see what happens next…

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That is, if we can keep Cleo from eating them along the way, too!  🙄

Daily Garden Update – Unleashed (pt. 1)

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I read somewhere about conditioning your plants to be transplanted, and although I think it was more referring to moving plants from indoors to outdoors, whereas I’ve kept my terrarium outside since the day that I bought it, I finally decided to just toss the lid to the side and let them spread their leaves in preparation for moving them to a bigger container.

…and mind you, I haven’t exactly been feeling the greatest, but I really need to figure something out and make that happen this week – I can’t even imagine what kind of a tangled mess their root systems must look like at this point!

just a few hours at Disney World

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Admittedly we weren’t even there very long – I think we walked through the turnstiles at the Magic Kingdom at maybe 7:30pm because we had just enough time to run a quick errand before catching Wishes at 8pm, and then after grabbing dinner at Pecos Bill’s and taking in a couple of attractions, we were back out the door just after 10pm … not even waiting until the park officially closed at 11pm.

It was a short trip, but I think it was one of those cases where we were both incredibly stressed and needed a distraction, and it wasn’t until we were actually surrounded by said distraction that we also realized just how incredibly tired we were! But it was fun – we watched Wishes from a strange perspective (across from the First Aid Station by the Crystal Palace) and learned why it wasn’t so great (bad location for the soundtrack, mostly, because you could hear a lot of chatter, too), and then we also got a chance to go on Peter Pan, which is always fun because although I think it’s a neat ride, there’s no way I’m ever standing in line for the bizarrely normal 2-hour wait for that particular attraction!

It was a good start for 2013, though, and hopefully as our temperatures start to stabilize … but not get too hot … we’ll find ourselves over there a bit more often in the spring months soon to come. 😉

Daily Garden Update – Water, Water Everywhere…

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It’s funny – I was ultra-paranoid about making sure that I watered these things every single day because I was afraid that otherwise I’d still be looking at a plastic tray full of dirt! But lately it’s actually been raining on and off, on top of the fact that the terrarium lid seems to do a pretty great job of keeping the moisture in (the first two days I dumped it off to the side before I realized that I should be pouring it back into the soil instead!).

Plus, my uncontainable problem continues to grow and instead, now I’m starting to worry about accidentally killing one off by catching it between the edges. I have a feeling it’s just about time for these little fellas to move on to deeper soil…

Daily Garden Update – Day 16 and Climbing

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Starting to look very lush – the cucumbers in particular even have multiple types of leaves growing now, which I thought was kind of interesting. I read somewhere that both cucumbers and tomatoes like to climb and admittedly there’s not much climbing medium inside this smooth, plastic terrarium, so I guess I really need to get on it and figure out some pots to move these little fellas to, as well as I guess a trellis or something for them to begin their fruitful ascent towards … I really need to learn the word for when plants start producing vegetables! 

🙄

Carnival Triumph’s Poopy Halls … Pics or It Didn’t Happen

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Clearly I’m not the only one who’s gotten more than a little frustrated with how the media has been covering the Carnival Triumph incident over the last week, so I was pretty intrigued to come across this interview with a staff member from a popular cruise review site who happened to be on that very cruise and sure enough, most of what was being reported was greatly exaggerated or just blatantly made up.

http://www.cruisemates.com/articles/feature/Carnival-Triumph-Passenger-Interview-130216.cfm

It astounds me that in this technological age of cell phones and iPads that while you’ve got people on the ship who are able to call loved ones and do interviews with the media, nobody ever managed to actually produce pictures of sewage flooding the halls like so many accounts cried about. That one in particular stands out to me because it’s a pretty graphic statement – a hallway FILLED with shit and piss – and yet as much as the Internet loves a grotesque picture … nothing.

We’ve seen photos of less than savory conditions like mattresses out on the open decks and tents made out of towels and red bio-hazard bags for human waste, but bags to dispose of your poop is still a far cry from just shitting right in the middle of the hallway like some have tried to make it sound.

The thing is, I’m sure it hasn’t been fun to experience all that these folks have had to experience over the last 7 days, but let’s keep it in perspective…

  • It’s not like the Titanic because the ship didn’t sink to the bottom of the sea and nobody died.
  • It’s not like when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans because although they may not have always been as informed as they may have liked, nobody watched their homes get washed away and lost members of their family.

The best quote I read was from a guest in The Huffington Post – “It’s a disastrous vacation – it’s not a disaster.”

At the end of the day I actually have to hand it to Carnival for making the best of a bad situation … they kept everybody fed, they managed to get everyone home safe, the boat didn’t sink, and the compensation that’s being offered essentially gives everyone either a second chance at another Carnival cruise for free and then some (once you consider a full refund for this cruise plus a credit equal to what was paid for the next one plus $500 per passenger) or even another vacation with someone who isn’t Carnival, should passengers choose to walk away. Some people probably think that they’re owed the moon & the stars and no doubt there will be lawsuits that arise from this, as lawyers have already come forward eager to fight for disgruntled passengers, but nobody died and when you go back and read the menus mentioned in that first link that I posted, it really could’ve been a whole lot worse!

P.S. Here’s an interesting Reddit AMA that started while the boat was still at sea and continued answering questions once they all got back to dry land…

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…and here are some delicious cookies from the Carnival cruise that I went on last fall…

Daily Garden Update – Just Bursting with Green!

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Day 11 and as you can see, it’s getting kinda tough to put the lid back on the terrarium without crimping some of the outer sprouts. Not sure how much longer they’ve got in their current home – I haven’t exactly measured them lately or anything, but they’ve gotta be getting close to 5″ in the cucumber department and the tomatoes aren’t too far behind, either! 😉

Holy mother of god, the sky is on fire…

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This is pretty wild.

I haven’t read much of the news about this meteor crash over in Russia yesterday, except that it sounds like it injured a lot of people, but how any of these drivers didn’t just swerve off the road like the world is coming to an end is beyond me!

I mean, seriously – when the sky is ON FIRE, I’m pretty sure it’s socially acceptable to crap your pants no matter what you happen to be doing at the time.  😯

Dream Journal : Night of a Thousand Tangents

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This one was all over the place – I’m hoping that it was actually multiple dreams and I’m just blending them all together now, but bleh! 😯

So it all started with a maze … that’s underwater.

But not like under the sea underwater – more like somebody took a traditional maze that you could walk through and then flooded it, so you kind of climbed over one of the walls to get in. And it was fun and I was running (?) around the maze underwater having a great time with random classmates that I went to high school with, and then suddenly I realized that my phone was still in my pocket.

Actually, two phones, because when I got out, I first pulled an old flip phone from one pocket, didn’t care what had happened to that, but then pulled my iPhone from another pocket and apparently the water had just ruined it. Not shorted out, mind you, but the case was all coming apart, the headphone socket had wires showing – it was a mess!

Oddly enough, the display itself still worked.

Anyways, next up I was walking up to the courtesy desk at a grocery store, although it felt more like a pawn shop because I was asking if they’d seen any BB guns lately … apparently mine had gotten stolen and I suspected that maybe it had been pawned at one of the local shops. The gun in question was a “blinged out” BB gun, with a scope and other bling (rhinestones, I guess?!). Needless to say, the guy behind the desk didn’t have it, and then also told me that I was in the wrong store when I told him that I knew that it had been taken to a specific address.

Interestingly enough, I did have a rather nice BB gun growing up that was given to me as a gift from my Grandpa on my Mom’s side (I think?) and it had a scope, but no rhinestones…  😕

Next stop – I’m at an auto repair shop trying to get my car fixed, and while they’re working on it, a salesman wants to sell me a new car, but then he doesn’t. He kind of looks like the crazy Texan from The Simpsons, minus the pistols, and he wants to sell me a truck. I tell him I don’t want a truck, but a car instead, and he replies that he doesn’t sell the kind of car that I drive anyways, so I’d be much better off with a truck instead. I then explain that I don’t need a new car just like my old one, and give him some other options, but he shoots all of those down, too.

Finally I give up arguing with him, and somebody comes in to tell me that my car is ready. When I go out to it in the garage, it’s got a flat tire all over again – the same one that they supposedly had just fixed, and when I complain to the guy running the shop, he replies that I’m wrong because they just fixed it … even though we’re both staring at the flat tire right then and there.

So for the last part of the dream, I’m with a bunch of my friends at a restaurant and we’re all about to leave together on a big road trip. I guess we wanted to leave town with a bang or something, so one of my friends gets the idea for us to burn the diner down.

WHA?!?!?!?!

For whatever reason we all go along with it, and we’re in the back of the restaurant – in the kitchen area. My one friend has some sort of flaming beverage that he’s going to send out on a waiter’s tray to do the deed (don’t question me about logistics – most of my dreams never make any sense!), and while they’re doing that, I go outside because I’m a little nervous about the whole thing … rightfully so! When I get outside and can’t find my car, I go running back and tell them to stop because our ride is gone.

Remember – it had a flat tire from the last scene?! Continuity, for once! 🙂

The dream ended with one of my other friends walking calmly out of the restaurant, and upon being asked what happened to the fire, he just shrugged and said that he put it out.