the most important election of your lifetime: 2012 american general election thread

heres a drone piece i just happen to have had open in my bookmarks http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/07/aclu-sues-awlaki-khan-death

suuure, that's why everyone wondered how many Bushites wd be prosecuted by Obama, which is funnier than the Phillies' season. xxxp

i guess Vic is a little more coherent...

settin' the bar low, eh

that's why everyone wondered how many Bushites wd be prosecuted by Obama

lol this was never going to happen and I said so from the outset

you know who's going to prosecute Obama admin for extra-judicial killings? President Romney.

thats prob whats in his tax returns

Never fear, I've been allotted twenty more minutes to free your minds from the ass that follows.

Um, where to start. Yes, it is appalling that anyone would think that "Reagan was right in 1980 and Obama is right in 2012." About what exactly? Communism? Islamics? WTF? I guess it doesn't matter that the US fucked Iranian democracy back in the 1950s and they might have long term problems with that. Nobody actually thinks the Soviet Union was some kind of threat to the US in the 80s at this point, right??

Only Americans are allowed to have long term problems with things. All the other countries need to get over it.

I really enjoy the notion that Glenn Greenwald should go away because a few other people have brought the same issues up. "Oh hey Bill Maher, no, you shouldn't have me on as a guest again, there's this thread on ILX where they discuss these kinds of things all the time, and have you seen Balloon Juice? You should have them on your show instead, I'm totally redundant."

I even have a problem with the idea that only the targeted killing of American citizens should be a problem, weird as that may be. No, I actually think that maybe non-American citizens should not be killed in a kind of half-assed-maybe-they-might-be-a-problem manner. I know, I'm just really strange that way, but you know, god bless america and god keep us safe from all the people who might have some weird irrational reason for not liking our country.

I really enjoy the notion that Glenn Greenwald should go away because a few other people have brought the same issues up. "Oh hey Bill Maher, no, you shouldn't have me on as a guest again, there's this thread on ILX where they discuss these kinds of things all the time, and have you seen Balloon Juice? You should have them on your show instead, I'm totally redundant."

dude no one on ILX has been asked to be on Bill Maher's show.

who do you think youre addressing here vic perry

Bill Maher should be stabbed repeatedly in the face imho

sorry I just hate that guy

Feel like Pareene mighta been asked.

I'll go on Maher if Shakey, lag∞n, and Morbs join me. I'll insist on it.

sounds like fun!

i would love to go on bill maher, thank you for inviting me alfred

Can't wait for Dr. Morb's NEW RULES

If you guys don't bring Dennis Perrin on with you, I'm not watching.

we can do shots in the green room

Perrin booked on Letterman's "Stupid Pet Tricks" iirc

epic not getting it

heal thyself etc

Perrin used to write for Maher

WAHT?!

dun dun DUN

I'll go on Maher if Shakey, lag∞n, and Morbs join me.

which of you will be playing the joe walsh role

my maserati goes 1.85

We've got Sullivan's brand of idiocy, and then we have the conservative mainstream (Pat Sajak!) brand of idiocy:

mainstream Dem Washington Monthly blogpost:

Reading a lot of conservative posts last night and this morning (unfortunately, just part of the gig here), I was mystified at the conviction of so many people that the mangled clips of the president’s “you didn’t build that” quote from Roanoke provided a gigantic, “aha” moment in the campaign that would drive Obama from the White House like a whipped Kenyan dog. The money quote that most of them are tossing around comes from the deep thinker Pat Sajak:

It’s as if President Obama climbed into a tank, put on his helmet, talked about how his foray into Cambodia was seared in his memory, looked at his watch, misspelled “potato” and pardoned Richard Nixon all in the same day.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_07/magic_word_gaffes038713.php

So, as usual in their epistemic closure, they're cherry picking for a gotcha quote instead of addressing the Presdient's point, a valid point, that they don't fucking live in some romatically anarchic hyper-individualist world but in a society where the insitutions and infrastructure they rely on often was built by government at various levels. These people are too stupid to be trusted even as fertilizer.

Thankfully C-Kraut will straighten out the mess.

So, as usual in their epistemic closure, they're cherry picking for a gotcha quote instead of addressing the Presdient's point, a valid point...

yeah, they're making hay out of the valid point that obama annihilated with colossally stupid, tone-deaf phrasing. just as liberals would, were mittens to eat his feet in an attempt to say something sensible.

its funny because even in isolation 'If you've got a business, you didn't build that.' its clear that hes referring to something other than the business

mitt does that all the fucking time, all the republican candidates did in the primary season

let's make a million posts about what Ann Romney meant when she said "you people" when saying that they wouldn't release more tax info

lol i did think about that

unfortunately i don't have a nationally syndicated radio show where i make shit up for 2 hours every day, so it probably wouldn't make much of a difference

i should get one of those shows

let's elaborate these short phrases into extended ruminations on the way we know these politicians really think, because we have to fill hours of airtime

Z S it's the age of the internet just record a podcast and we'll promote it 4 u

Obama, Romney and the media are all lying.

Because of America’s progressive tax system, all taxpayers under Obama’s plan — including those making more than $250,000 a year — will get a tax cut on their first $250,000 of income. According to the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, this means that Obama’s initiative, which would cost $150 billion, will give a one-year $20,130 tax cut to the top 1 percent of income earners. Meanwhile, the $210 billion Republican plan would give that income group a $70,790 tax cut.

In other words, this supposedly monumental debate isn’t over whether to punish or further enrich households in the top 1 percent — both proposals do the latter. Instead, this is a minute dispute over whether the tax code should give each of those households the equivalent salary of one butler (Obama’s plan) or three butlers (Romney’s plan). For every other income group, the two proposals are identical.

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/20/americas_grand_tax_lie/

Well obv

under our system, there's no way to give a tax cut to everyone making $250K and less without also giving a tax cut on the first $250K of people making above that figure. but it's really disingenuous to say that the obama proposal will "further enrich households in the top 1 percent". yes, super rich people would get a $20K or so tax cut off of the first $250K of their income. but if you're making millions of dollars and the tax rate on your income OVER $250K goes up, you're going to end up paying more money overall.

otm. shitty article.

No kidding, we have a progressive tax system, they're not talking about making the rates for the lower tiers higher if you fall into an upper tier.

It still amazes me, when speaking to people I know, that they have no idea how taxes work. A friend was explaining that he didn't want a small raise, because then he'd be bumped to a higher tax bracket, and he'd be making less than he was now. Tax brackets do not work like that.

for example, the top tax bracket right now is 35%, for income over $388,000. That top bracket would rise to 39.6% under obama's plan.

let's say you make 1 million dollars in a year. before, you paid on $214,200 in taxes on your income over $388,000 (612,000 x .35). under obama's plan, you would pay $242,352 in taxes on your income over $388,000 (612,000 x .396). that's an increase of $28,152, which more than offsets the aforementioned "$20,130 tax cut to the top 1 percent of income earners" in the salon article.

yeah, it's not that much of an increase (although the tax burden would be much heavier on the super super rich making many millions a year), but it's just not accurate to say that everyone is "lying".

I think we should add another tax bracket at $1 million that goes up to 50% or so. And then maybe a few more above that.

that article would work well as an image macro posted to facebook

and yeah were obvs in need of more tax brackets

This is funny:

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/07/qu-5.html

but relatives aren't part of a vast socialist-Fabian bureaucracy

"and supportive relatives aren't (necessarily) coercive"

-every "libertarian" on facebook