ya know what? It's too damn nice outside.

Good day for the Wine Country or the Beach, perhaps?
I'm headed that way shortly, myself.

it's the incredible growth of the "lower class". The amount of people living at or below poverty level in this country... THAT is what we should be looking at

We should be careful what we define as "the poverty line" in terms of
historical perspective. Most people in the US living below the poverty line
have a trailer or apartment, a TV set, a microwave, a telephone, and a
refrigerator. I.e., way better off than 99.9% of the world a few hundred
years earlier.
These people (or more likely, their children) can boost themselves out of this
through education and hard work.

"True poverty" are the people living in tin shacks in the Louisiana Bayou or
homeless on the streets of the big city.
These people are fairly screwed and we definitely should be concerned about
them, both because it is a crappy life for them, and a waste of their potential
to society.

I can't shake the feeling lately that some nasty stuff is going to go down in my lifetime.

Yes, I have that same feeling.