What Americans Think of Inequality in One Graph

Blatant rip-off of Ezra Klein. I <3 that guy. I even ripped off his title! Can I be sued for that? Someone call a lawyer!

Gaddifisms

This Gaddafi guy is a legitimate supervillian. These are actual, real quotes from the speech he gave today. He sounds like Lex Luthor!

"Today, when you say Libya—yes, Libya, Qaddafi, Qaddafi, the revolution! All the African people now consider Libya the leader, even Asia—the world leaders, now—all of them, everyone, with their power, are against Libya…. They defame your image in, unfortunately, now, the Arab media, who are serving the devil. Now it’s the time to respond with action on the ground, in the square…. The revolution means always sacrifice until the end of the age.

 Muammar Qaddafi is the history, the resistance, freedom, honor, revolution…. When the bombs were bombing this area and killed my kids, where were you at the time, where were you people? Now they’re talking in the dark about me!… This is Muammar Qaddafi. This is the house of Muammar Qaddafi."

"PS I wear white togas embroidered with rhinestones to the funerals. BECAUSE I AM EVIL."

"I will die as a martyr"

This guy sucks. Here's what he had to say today, annotated:

"I am a fighter, a revolutionary from tents [that's why i don't know how to dress]... I will die as a martyr at the end." [that would be cool! let's make it happen]

"I have not yet ordered the use of force, not yet ordered one bullet to be fired [this is a lie]... when I do, everything will burn [that is scary]."

"You men and women who love Gaddafi [no one knows Qaddafi's name is spelled with a G or a Q. obviously Q's are cooler, so from now on I'll use the G spelling] ...get out of your homes and fill the streets. Leave your homes and attack them in their lairs [lairs always sounds insidious but i think he means "public squares and parks"]... Starting tomorrow the cordons will be lifted, go out and fight them."

Shouting in the rambling speech, Gaddafi declared himself "a warrior" and proclaimed: "Libya wants glory, Libya wants to be at the pinnacle, at the pinnacle of the world" [blah blah i love africa and wearing window drapes]

Seriously, this is exactly the worry for these protesters in the rest of the Middle East: most regimes are REALLY OPPRESSIVE AND MURDEROUS. I think the best hope now is that the military turns on him and, yes, kills his brains out. There's not much the U.S. can do. Diplomatic pressure won't mean monkey crap to this loser-dictator.

Also, Libya is the world's 3rd largest oil-producing nation. This could REALLY cause a disruption in the world's oil-flow and lead to massive gas price shocks. Watch out summer, gas could easily hit $5/gallon for a sustained period. Honestly, I think something like that could really hurt Obama. People HATE high gas prices, and there is very little he can do about it. Damn!