The Colonel's Forum

This article grabbed my attention last week. Among other things, it provides a historical perspective on a major topic in American politics today - rich versus poor, makers versus takers, the notion that all poor people (or a full 47% of the country, according to Romney) are freeloaders. Here's another spin on it from my ideology-shifting Senator, Rand Paul. Rand, never far from a conspiracy theory, wants you to believe that the reason Obama is  pushing for a higher minimum wage is as a diversion, to draw attention away from the fact that the middle class is getting screwed these days. Right. A diversion, which implies that the Dems for some reason are trying to hide... what exactly? They just won two presidential elections by appealing to... the middle class who's getting screwed by... the 1% who fund the PACs that fund the GOP. If you're mad about the number of people getting public assistance, you either have to support raising the minimum wage or admit that you'

Yet another demonstration this week by the GOP that they are: Completely out of touch with popular sentiment Couldn't care less about rebuilding our shrinking middle class Are much more interested in taking symbolic, confrontational stances on issues than actually doing the logical (and moral) thing.  Always going to side with big business over the common man I've blogged before about the staggering collapse of the middle class. It's a fact, not an opinion. It's not about Obama or W; it's been taking place for over 30 years now. The '08 recession definitely hurt the middle class a lot, but they were in pretty bad shape by '07 anyway. If you care to read about the topic, Carville & Greenberg wrote a great book on it. Are they biased? Hell yes they are. But let's be clear - just because they work for the Dems doesn't make them wrong. They're brilliant, and the book is filled with economic data that is not in dispute; any way you loo