Saturday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said, special Greedy Rich Bastards edition

Who says you never hit the trifecta:

1) Paul Farrell, at of all places, Marketwatch, on the new Civil War.

Money quote:

Wake up America. You are under attack. Stop kidding yourself. We are at war. In fact, we have been fighting this Civil War for a generation, since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1981. Recently Buffett renewed the battle cry: The “rich class” is winning this war. Except most Americans still don’t realize they’re losing, don’t see the prize at stake.

2) Joseph Stiglitz at Vanity Fair, on a nation Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%.

Money quote (just one, because the entire article is worth your time):

America has long prided itself on being a fair society, where everyone has an equal chance of getting ahead, but the statistics suggest otherwise: the chances of a poor citizen, or even a middle-class citizen, making it to the top in America are smaller than in many countries of Europe. The cards are stacked against them. It is this sense of an unjust system without opportunity that has given rise to the conflagrations in the Middle East: rising food prices and growing and persistent youth unemployment simply served as kindling.

And last, but my no means least, Driftglass (who is fundraising, and you should throw him a few shekels if you can), who rips the curtain aside and exposes the Reagan legacy.

Money quote:

Reagan was the first mountain of coke the Right piled onto the national coffee table; the first, chilly bottles of champagne bought with stolen credit cards being popped. Reagan was the promise that the peak moment of frenzied, stomping, tribal, rage-drunk Wingnut Worldfuck -- the moment when everything was beautiful, and everyone was gonna get laid -- could be made to last forever and ever if they all just clap-clap-clapped loud enough, hated hard enough, and all agreed to never under any circumstances look back at the ruin they were leaving in their wake.