US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

Add a piano overdub.

Watching "This Week" was like wandering into a nursing home common area where the residents are falling asleep on wheelchairs and drooling. Every one of these Very Serious People insisted that the Dems had To Do Something about "entitlements."

We Unserious People need to come to understand that we're not entitled to anything. We're too, what's the word, uppity.

maybe Obama has won a tactical "victory," but this is like listening to two mental patients trying to win an argument about whether aliens from Mars are green or red.

so kent conrad has dropped the senate democrat budget

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/senate-democrats-draft-debt-reduction-plan/2011/07/08/gIQAFQbS4H_story.html

"Senate Democrats are proposing to stabilize borrowing through sharp cuts at the Pentagon and other government agencies, as well as $2 trillion in new taxes, primarily on families earning more than $1 million year."

"Under the blueprint, the top income tax rate would rise to 39.6 percent for individuals earning more than $500,000 a year and families earning more than $1 million. That group, which constitutes the nation’s richest 1 percent of households, would also pay a 20 percent rate on capital gains and dividends, rather than the 15 percent rate now in effect."

oh my god more democrat attempts to tax america's middle class

it smells like leadership!

u kno the average millionaire is barely making ends meet so idk what the democrats are thinking taxing our most vulnerable families

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/business/the-unemployed-somehow-became-invisible.html

In some ways, this boils down to math, both economic and political. Yes, 9.2 percent of the American work force is unemployed — but 90.8 percent of it is working. To elected officials, the unemployed are a relatively small constituency. And with apologies to Karl Marx, the workers of the world, particularly the unemployed, are also no longer uniting.

Nor are they voting — or at least not as much as people with jobs. In 2010, some 46 percent of working Americans who were eligible to vote did so, compared with 35 percent of the unemployed, according to Michael McDonald, a political scientist at George Mason University. There was a similar turnout gap in the 2008 election.

No wonder policy makers don’t fear unemployed Americans. The jobless are, politically speaking, more or less invisible.

Michael McDonald: what a fool believes.

that's a good article

yeah good piece

Just ask Rick McHugh, who worked in Michigan as an employment lawyer for the United Automobile Workers from the 1980s through the 1990s. He represented workers who were appealing denials of unemployment insurance benefits. The union footed the bill for people he represented who were not, and had never been, U.A.W. members.

Today, however, many unions are fighting for their own survival. They no longer provide such support for nonmembers. “They just don’t have the staff and the resources to support these programs and the recipients like they used to,” says Mr. McHugh, now a staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project.

ending is kinda glib but w/e

got my letter from bam asking me to donate to the DNC! this was the take-home message

President Obama cannot keep the Republicans from stopping the progress he has made without your support.

and yeah thirding - v interesting article (knew iatee would like it) - i was only up to the part i quoted when i posted that

its hard not to think that wed be in much better shape right now if organized labor had even half the organizing clout and political power it used to

haha why did you know I would like it!

other than it being good

Obama had a speech a couple weeks ago where he said the economy is gonna get worse.
Take home message: He doesn't care much because if he did he could prevent the economy from getting worse.

boom

u like unemployed ppl

no but it was the part about the movement of people to the suburbs that made me think you'd find it interesting in particular

xxp

haha I do like unemployed people and like to find ways to blame the suburbs, it's true

Obama had a speech a couple weeks ago where he said the economy is gonna get worse.
Take home message: He doesn't care much because if he did he could prevent the economy from getting worse.

― Muttley vs. Mumbly (CaptainLorax), Sunday, July 10, 2011 10:35 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

cap whats the over/under on obama doing another 9/11

shutup with your 9/11 jokes already

over/under is obviously 9/11

i suppose i mean "whats the over/under on the number of days before obama does another 9/11"

not raising the debt ceiling would be another 9-11

i'll give lorax 50:1 odds on $1,000 that obama orchestrates a terrorist attack

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/u/unmanned_aerial_vehicles/index.html

http://www.myemoticons.com/images/entertainment/stage-/take-a-bow.gif

its hard not to think that wed be in much better shape right now if organized labor had even half the organizing clout and political power it used to

ding ding ding ding

i'd settle for a quarter of it

Great, another weekday morning Obama press conference starts in 9 minutes. Will he point out how Reagan and Clinton and others have included tax revenues in deficit deals? I doubt it.

whatever his comm staff is getting paid it's way too much

"authors of best-selling books"???

Yep, while every news story quotes a Republican saying "You can't raise taxes during a recession."

that best-sellers line was oh god

-Reagan raised taxes 11 times.
-Due to a variety of loopholes, the 400 richest earners in the USA pay ~17% in income tax.
-Many corporations pay an effective rate of ZERO percent.
-Tax revenues are at a 60 year low.
-Neither the Bush tax cuts nor their extensions have a had an appreciable effect on employment or the economy.

the first four are easily verifiable FACTS. the last one is goddamned hard to argue with, and it's up to supporters for tax cuts for the rich to prove otherwise. this should be the message all day, every day.

obama just defined the american dream ("that, if you... y'know, work hard...") in a voice like he could barely remember how this shit went anymore

'Reaganomics' architect David Stockman has said as much. conservative economist Bruce Bartlett has said as much. Alan freakin Greenspan has said as much.

xpost

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lo0teb9tYi1qz4sr8o1_500.jpg

lol

-Neither the Bush tax cuts nor their extensions have a had an appreciable effect on employment or the economy. ...

it's up to supporters for tax cuts for the rich to prove otherwise. this should be the message all day, every day.

ding ding ding ding ding ding fuckin ding

how are the questions? Are reporters still Not Getting It either?

i actually can't hear most of the words in the questions and obama's answers aren't sufficiently different from each other in any way that might give me any kind of clue

-Due to a variety of loopholes, the 400 richest earners in the USA pay ~17% in income tax.

I'm at a point in my life where this REALLY fucking galls me because I make just enough to get completely killed by taxes. Like I don't mind paying my share but the fact that people who really wouldn't feel having to pay theirs...don't...pisses me the fuck off

how often is our president referring to taxes as "revenue enhancements"

If only he would say over and over again that Reagan and Clinton used them...

Of course I saw another letter to the Washington Post from a Republican whining about those folks who do not pay any income tax--- those too poor to do so. I saw Orin Hatch quoted on this over the weekend as well (and George Will frequently whines about it also). The nerve of those poor lucky duckies(only paying sales taxes and payroll taxes and state taxes and such)

O's still pushing for a big deficit cutting package, according to the W. Post summary of the press conference.

Eat your peas, prez says.

peas are among the most delicious vegetables, I give this metaphor a 2.9

Yeah, man. He should have picked something more contentious, like Brussels sprouts.