Surprise surprise ladies and gentleman: Politico reports that of the 535 members of Congress, 237 are millionaires. That’s 45%. Forty-fucking-five percent, compared to only 1% of Americans overall. While you were busy stuffing your face with corn fructose byproducts, they were busy stuffing their pockets with bribes. And just remember children: democracy works.

Oh no! A white person was denied access to their local organic food co-op!!!! Praise be Allah, the New York Times was there to document the bourgeois tragedies that the ‘mainstream media’ refuse to acknowledge:

“You’re suspended,” the entrance worker at the Park Slope Food Coop announced as I swiped my membership card. Some entrance workers speak softly, but not this one. Worse, there were a dozen other shoppers within earshot.

Flushed, defeated and taken aback — I knew I owed the co-op some work, but I didn’t know I had been blacklisted — I slunk around the corner for a takeout burrito…

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Stats to make you blue:

Percentage change since 2002 in average premiums paid to large US health-insurance companies: +87%

Percentage change in the profits of the top ten insurance companies: +428%

Chances that an American bankrupted by medical bills has health insurance: 7 in 10

[via Common Dreams]

There are six lobbyists [from the health care industry] for each of the 535 members of the House and Senate, according to Senate records, and three times the number of people registered to lobby on defense. More than 1,500 organizations have health-care lobbyists, and about three more are signing up each day. Every one of the 10 biggest lobbying firms by revenue is involved in an effort that could affect 17 percent of the U.S. economy.

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Remember Barack Obama during the campaign — full of hope, change, and promises to make a clean break from the disastrous policies of George Bush? 6 months into his Presidency, not only has he failed to live up to the most basic of his promises, but he has embraced many of Bush’s most asinine and destructive positions.

Days before his inauguration, Obama made it clear he would close Guantanamo Bay, begin the process of moving current detainees through US or international legal systems, and stop torture from being committed by Americans. In fact, he blankly stated [via MSNBC]:

“I was clear throughout this campaign and was clear throughout this transition that under my administration the United States does not torture,” Obama said… “We will abide by the Geneva Conventions. We will uphold our highest ideals.”

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So Megan McArdle, who has been on the wrong side of every financial issue since she started with the Atlantic, whose economic abilities are on par with a second-year economics major who can spout off rehearsed appraisals of current affairs through the dim lens of free market axioms, and whose writing style consists of the kind of mealy-mouthed observations you’d usually find buried in the Metro section of the Washington Post…. has this to say about Matt Taibbi’s article on Goldman Sachs:

What I think, sadly, is that Matt Taibbi is becoming the Sarah Palin of journalism. He seems to deliberately eschew understanding his subjects, because only corrupt, pointy-headed financial journalists who have been co-opted by the system do that. And Matt Taibbi is here to save you from those pointy headed elites….

The more dangerous thing is that Taibbi makes a lot of people feel like they finally understand how they were conned. Taibbi’s facile use of technical terms, his lengthy explanation of little-known secrets that have been endlessly rehashed on every financial page for going on a decade, gives people the illusion that they have acquired valuable information about the financial crisis. They haven’t. They’ve acquired a bunch of disconnected vignettes.

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