– Today in false dichotomies: Urban America versus America.
– Congrats to Shaun for 9 8 years’ writing at Upper Left.
– Progressive Voter’s Guide. Pro-Choice Voter’s Guide.
– Sound Transit’s service revisions.
– Fauntleroy is safer and not noticeably slower after a road diet.
– Unless you’re living in a cardboard box, you have nothing to complain about.
I must admit I was unclear about what the protesters were all about until I heard this message–
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW56Z-0xwIQ
I think this says it all.
Gone, gone, gone.
NYT: Handy-dandy interactive chart (several actually) for understanding the Euro crisis and how it affects the US:
It’s All Connected: An Overview of the Euro Crisis
There is also an 18×21″ printable version at the bottom of the page, similar in style to the “Annotation” page in Harpers. It’s now my desktop wallpaper.
re 1: “I think this says it all.”
No. All it says is what you are capable of understanding.
If you put up a link to something that contradicts the propaganda that you consider to be the last word on this issue, I will consider that you have actually come to a decision based on all of the evidence.
So, the Republicans want the Border Patrol to be able to do whatever it wants within a 100 mile swath of the borders. So much for Republicans being distrustful of the government and being for small government. And never mind that the Border Patrol never asked for what the Republicans want to give them. What a bunch of jokers.
re 5: Wouldn’t all that government patrolling put a crimp in the free-market marihuana import/agriculture market?
@5: They already have authority (Patriot Act) to do warrantless searches within 100 miles of a border or marine shoreline. And it’s LE in general, not just BP.
That’s basically means 80% of the US population — including us — no longer longer have 4th amendment rights if they can trump up some sort of terrorist or immigration justification.
Ummm, Carl, that would be eight years of Upper Left — 2003 through 2011.
OTOH, Peace Tree Farm will celebrate its ninth birthday on January 2, 2012.
Geez. Fauntleroy too?
2
I heard Bachmann say on a Sunday morning talk show yesterday that her campaign had “replaced” its NH team and that such was evidence of the campaign was competing in NH. Is it possible she just flat-out lied?
@10
It looks like she got caught flat footed, that at first she really didn’t know the whole team quit, and then lied about with the “we replaced them” bit.
The curious thing is that all her staffers had jobs when they left. Did they get bought out?
@9
I remember screaming down Fauntleroy hill on my bike way, way, over the limit. Guess those days are over. Well, they’re over regardless, I’m too old for that sort of thing now.
# 5: You have to wonder what Perry’s position is on this. My understanding is that there is a lot of blow-back by some strong political interests in Texas, many of them Republicans, against the border fence. It seems that they had been relying upon the Rio Grande for years as a watering hole for their cattle and horses, and the border fence was cutting them off from those sources.
Anybody who knows anything about the history of Texas (and some other western states) knows that (a) water rights/access have always been a big issue, (b) land without access to a reliable water supply is worthles, and (c) more than a few range wars have been started over this issue.
The argument is that the border fences can’t be completed in a reasonable amount of time if their construction is subject to environmental impact statements and other such regulations. But since a lot of Republican farmers don’t want the fence, this seems to be an effort by those outside the areas to pretend to be doing something to appeal to the anti-immigrant forces elsewhere.
But Republicans know this proposal isn’t going anywhere, it would be blocked in the Senate or vetoed by the President. I think it’s just one of a number of hand grenades they will be lobbing at the President over the next year, hoping to hit on a campaign issue. It allows them to complain that they “tried” to restrict illegal immigration into the U.S., but the President didn’t let them.
@12
Whiskey’s for drinking, water’s for fighting.
There’s no need for a fence, just bust the employers who hire illegals. Which Obama is doing at record rates. Obama owns most of the Republican issues.
@1 You’re not clear about anything, never have been, never will be. It’s a structural problem — you were born without brains. Can’t be fixed.
@2 Well well — only last week I read this “rumor” was denied by the Bachliar’s campaign spokesliar. Now it seems the “rumor” was true and the denial was a lie.
The way things are going, Bachmann won’t make it to the first caucus. Maybe not even to Turkey Day.
@3 That’s why I’m sitting out the current stock market rally, which I firmly suspect is ostrich-like in its optimism.
Shit. Fan. Don’t stand in front.
Got the picture?
@6 Never has yet; no reason to believe it ever will.
In order to believe that environmental laws, etc., are holding back enforcement of immigration laws, you have to believe that a succession of Republican administrations from Reagan onward were rampaging environmentalists.
@10 “Is it possible she just flat-out lied?”
Is it possible she didn’t?
“I remember screaming down Fauntleroy hill on my bike way, way, over the limit. Guess those days are over. Well, they’re over regardless, I’m too old for that sort of thing now.”
Do you mean going down Morgan Street to California and Fauntleroy? I wasn’t crazy enough to do that one on a bike. Hmm, and as a sled ride, I don’t see that one ending well at all. On the other hand, speeding down Barton might be fun.
Koch-Cain’s Revamped ‘9-9-9′ Plan Still Guts Middle Class
Any presidential candidate who has to revamp the centerpiece proposal of his campaign only a few weeks into the campaign should get knocked out of the race.
But Herman Cain, the Koch brothers’ embedded candidate, is much worse than that. Because “999” Ver. 2.0, redesigned under the pressure of withering criticism by economists of Version 1.0, is even worse.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center says the original version of “999” would boost the federal tax liability of a median-income household making $49,445 a year by 66%, from 14.3% to 23.8% of their income. The poor would see an even bigger increase.
Even under Cain’s revamped “909” version, the poor will pay more. If you factor in loss of the earned income credit and child tax credit, much more.
Cain is offering an exemption from his ruinous taxes on the poor to economically blighted areas he dubs “Opportunity Zones.” But to get the exemption, states have to abolish their minimum wage laws and enact right-to-work laws.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/20.....middle-cl/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Cain’s abusive tax scheme probably will get revamped yet again, after Version 2.0 withers under scrutiny, but it really doesn’t matter how many times it’s reworked because its fundamental structure will remain in place: Enormous new tax breaks at the expense of the middle class and poor, and full-scale assault on worker rights.
And don’t forget, “999” or “909” or whatever he calls it is just temporary, a bridge to the so-called “Fair Tax” which eliminates all taxes on all forms of income and replaces them with a whopping 30% federal sales tax (on top of state and local sales taxes) that will be overwhelmingly borne by the middle class and poor, and virtually not at all by the rich.
It has to be this way, because Herman Cain is nothing but an employee of the ultra-rich, ultra-conservative, ultra-greedy and ultra-power hungry Koch brothers, who want to do to the United States what Moammar Gadhafi did to Libya.
We’re now learning that Moammar Gadhafi was the world’s richest man, having used his absolute power over an oil-rich country to amass over $200 billion of personal wealth (or nominally state-owned wealth to which he and his family had unrestricted access, which is the same thing).
But at the end of the day, when the ordinary citizens rose up against him, he couldn’t even buy a bus ticket out of town. Let that be an object lesson to oligarchs and plutarchs everywhere.
The only lesson they’ll take is to be even more ruthless and rapacious but a little smarter about it, i.e. keep the killing and the terrorizing of the little people on low-low…
I’ll be boom-times for right wing private “security” outfits who fund Republicans in this country.
It’s always about money, of course. People who rig elections, stifle dissent, and establish undemocratic regimes have their fingers in other people’s pockets. They go to the trouble of setting up and running dictatorships — which is a lot of trouble — so they can take whatever money they want and no one can stop them.
When you already have $200 billion how much more do you need?
More. Just more. As much as he could get.
You see, whenever you let people like this take something, it emboldens them to take more. When Neville Chamberlain let Hitler seize Austria and Czechoslavkia, he ensured that Germany would invade Poland, and later France, and later still, Russia. Hitler never would have stopped until someone stopped him.
It’s the same with America’s cheap labor conservatives. They will never stop unless someone stops them. First, they took away pensions and health care benefits. Then, they went after unions and workers’ organizing rights. Now they want to roll back minimum wage laws. Safety laws and child labor laws are in the queue, you can bet on it. The grabbing will never stop. If they get all that, we may see serious talk about repealing the 13th Amendment and reviving slavery. Like Hitler, the cheap labor conservatives won’t stop until they have unchallengeable world domination. Even having all the money and power won’t be enough for them. When they have that, they’ll come for your daughters.
HA HA HA! David Duke loves the “whiteness” of the Tea Baggers! He’s critical of the “leaders” who put people of color on the stage to promote its FALSE diversity.
Only if you can stomach it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....redirect=1
@23 Syria’s Assad is next, and make no mistake, when he falls from power the citizens he’s been shooting up with tanks and machineguns will kill him.
The ex-dictator of Tunisia was allowed to walk away because he didn’t butcher unarmed protesters. Mubarak wasn’t allowed to walk or retire to a seaside villa because he stole too much; he’s headed for jail. The killers — Gadhafi first, others will follow — get a dirt hole.
That’s as it should be. That’s justice. It’s also human nature. When people are being killed, they kill back.
LMAO!!! Karl Rove must be on the Koch brother’s shit list:
http://www.politico.com/news/s.....66698.html
@6,17
There’s enough mark up on the product to pay for a little border patrol protection…
Too damn funny! Now Faux and Farts are wagging about “the war on Halloween”!!!
Any right winger raised on Jack Chick tracts has been paranoid of Halloween since forever!
http://twitpic.com/754cb4
Um… Don’t remember the exact streets other than Fauntleroy. I was headed from hanging out on California to the ferry dock.
One of my nephews just moved to West Seattle so I might have to start taking the ferry over and meeting him for lunch at Easy Street. I’ve always been a fan of West Seattle.
Damn! The right wing so misses Gaddafi…
http://www.memeorandum.com/111023/p41#a111023p41
oooh.. Mooslim brotherhood…. scary…
@29
Good lord, all the righty churches around Gig Harbor switched from Halloween to Harvest Festivals years ago. The righties killed that one.
The Titanic Isn’t Sinking
A rare trove of photographs and letters has just come on the auction market, CBS News reports. A Titanic survivor later wrote to his father that White Star Lines tried to spin the disaster by issuing a press release claiming the Titanic was afloat and was being towed toward shallow water.
http://www.cbsnews.com/2300-50.....l?tag=page
Roger Rabbit Commentary: This can serve as a metaphor for a lot of things, can’t it?
Government Death Panels Are Here
But they didn’t come from Obamacare. They’re a result of GOP-inspired budget-cutting.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/w.....8/1?csp=hf
# 27: Rove may be a an immoral SOB, but he’s also a realist. He realizes that just about all of the current candidates are un-electable in a general election. That’s why he’s been critical of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachman, Perry, and now Cain. It seems to me he has his horse hitched to Romney.
It makes some sense, because Rove led George W. Bush to victory by branding him as a moderate “compasionate conservative”, and he probably thinks he can do the same with Romeny. But perhaps he has over-estimated his enfluence within the Republican party, or under-estimated the ability of the tea-party to drive the GOP right over the brink?
When I think of the GOP and the tea party, I’m reminded of the Disney cartoon “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, where the hapless Micky Mouse thinks he has the mop & pail doing his chores for him, only to soon find that they are out of control and he’s about to be engulfed by the flood caused by his own creation.
Of course, it’s always dangerous to under-estimate Karl Rove, either. He usually comes out on top. Just ask John McCain, who is still smarting from the tire-marks across his back from the Bush campaign in S. Carolina in 2000.
A bigger issue might be: Why is anybody listening to Karl Rove, or any other right-wing “pundits” on Fox News? Their agenda was proven to be structurally unsound by 2008, and overwhelmingly rejected by voters then.
Yet they continue to pay failed politicians to give political advice: Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich (before he announced his candidacy),now Karl Rove, and even more recently Mark Stanford, the famous “Appalachian Trail” adulterer.
If the Titanic had sunk today, Fox News and all the Republican candidates for the presidency would announce that it was the fault of the Democrats, and caused by over-regulation of the cruise ship industry. And they would say it with a straight face, nodding gravely in agreement as each one repeated the lie.
@37
Fuckers.
Depressingly, it seems that governor Andrew Cuomo doesn’t have any balls.
Ha, ha.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stoller/2907411559/
It just keeps getting better.
Faux News employs these people because they are cut from the same cloth as their fanatically deluded and loyal audience or vice versa… They employ them because the hidden message is that these people are “Real Americans”, they “speak your language” and YOU TOO can spout the familiar right wing tripe and be a Faux News millionaire.. This echos the other failed tropes like “ownership society”, “compassionate conservative” and on and on…
Tim Eyman’s Initiative 1125 has taken a huge drop in the polls in one month. It appears that once voters found out the broad impact of the intiative, and that it didn’t just deal with tolls on bridges, then it’s losing popularity quickly.
Eyman’s Initiative 1125 plummeting in poll
And Ron Paul’s answer to rising education costs and the federal deficit? End student loans.
Paul wants to phase out federal student loans
@43
Timmy might have to get a real job once his sugar daddy cuts him off.
Here’s an article by an econogeek I don’t get around to reading as often as I should:
http://agonist.org/numerian/20....._arbitrage
The image of Wal-Mart as a “canary in the coal mine” is very interesting..
The future path he sketches is both worst-case and best-case and is pretty bleak.. I like to hope upside surprises out of some left field will brighten up these dark skies but I can’t shake the impression that he’s probably called it exactly right…
This is good.
Fox News tries to discredit the Wall Street protestors by finding the least informed among them to interview and ridicule.
But they happened upon an articulate spokesman, who not only clearly articulated the positions of the Occupy protesters, but also gave a devestating verbal beat-down of Fox New’s feigned “balanced” position.
Predictably, Fox News decided not to air the interview.
http://www.good.is/post/fox-ne.....e=outbrain
Bonnie and Clyde, Inc.
It has become fashionable among HA’s trolls, and also the corporate class’s shills on Stefan’s sucky little blog, to feign lack of understanding of what the Occupy movement is all about.
(C’mon, these guys never had an original thought in their lives; they’re all told what to think, so they all think alike.)
Well, maybe this little item will help them focus better. I’m quoting from Barron’s, 10/24/11 issue, p. 46, 5th paragraph down:
“So much natural gas has been produced in the U.S. and Canada in the past five years that prices have plummeted to $3.66 per million British thermal units, from a high of $13.18 just three years ago.”
So, if natural gas prices have dropped 72.23% since 2008, then your heating bills have dropped 72.23% too, right?
[raucous bunny laughter]
Last time I looked, my heating bills have gone up every year, and are still going up — they’re higher this winter than they were last winter. So someone is making a hell of a lot of money.
And it isn’t me, because I don’t own any shares of Puget Sound Energy stock, nor is it the retirees who used to own PSE stock, because PSE is now owned by a privately-held company. So we don’t even know who’s making all the money from raising customer’s heating bills while the cost of natural gas dropped like a rock. We only know somebody is.
Back in 2009, when PSE’s CEO got an $11 million bonus (or was it $20 million?) for selling PSE to private invetors, the Attorney General’s Public Counsel, who is paid much less than that to look out for consumers’ interests, issued a statement saying the sale would “harm” consumers.
http://www-dev.atg.wa.gov/pres.....x?id=21648
The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission, in tandem with its approval of the sale of Washington’s oldest public utility company (with roots in Territorial days) to foreign investors, also approved an increase in PSE’s “return on investment” (ROI) to 10.4%. The rationale for this was so the company could raise sufficient capital in the capital markets — at a time when retail savers and retirees have a hard time making 1% on their savings.
The WUTC voted 2-1 to approve the sale and rate icnrease. The deciding vote — against consumers’ interests — was cast by Mark Sidran, a guy who has run for public office as a Democrat in the past. (Sidran was Seattle City Attorney for a number of years.) I just want to point out that guy is no Democrat, so just keep that in mind if he ever runs for a public office again, and tries to defraud you into voting for him by pasting a “D” next to his name.
Washington homeowners who use natural gas for heating are getting ripped off big-time, but that’s merely symptomatic for what’s happening all across America, all across the board. This isn’t about building a better mousetrap or competing for customers with lower prices or better service, folks. The notion of honest competition in free markets was scrapped in this country long ago. Nobody spends billions of dollars to buy politicians to tweak government regulation or win a contract here and there. The corporate money that pollutes our politics has turned America into a lootacracy. The whole idea is to destroy competition, rig markets, and rob the public.
I’m not going to say your heating bills are being jacked up by corrupt bastards on the state regulatory commission. You’re responsible for drawing your own conclusions about such matters. I merely point out FACTS, which are that heating bills are going up while the wellhead cost of natural gas is dropping like a rock. If you want to draw an inference that crooked profiteering is going on, and this can’t happen with a regulated utility without corrupt regulators, that’s your business.
Now look at the American economy as a whole. What do you see that ISN’T being rigged? Product quality has gone to crap in everything from TV sets that go black six months after purchase to cantalopes that kill the people who eat them. The entire packaging and marketing industries are built around the invention of ingenious lies and frauds, such as making food packages larger while putting less product in them in order to conceal from consumers the fact you just raised the price by 40% on an inferior product. Mrs. Rabbit and I were talking last night about how crappy everything is — they don’t make beer like they used to, or chocolate, or anything else; everything has been cheapened. Virtually everything now sold in America represents some form of theft.
They’re slashing wages, taking away pensions, making workers pay for their own health care, raising the price of everything, while the quality of everything is going to hell, and a tiny minority of people are getting very very rich while everyone else is being shoved inexorably into poverty — and the right’s trolls and shills wonder why people are protesting?
Please.
I suppose if I showed up at Westlake with a sign reading,
“Adjust the ROI component of my heating bill to fairly reflect today’s interest rate realities!”
trolls like fleabag @1 and shills like pudge over on Sucky Politics would like at me funny and wonder what I’m protesting.
@47
Awesome.
Let me explain the Occupy protests to our rightwing friends in one simple sentence:
WE’RE TIRED OF BEING RIPPED OFF!!!
Is that clear enough for ya?
@47 So much for Fox’s “fair and balanced” bullshit.
The Wisconsin Republican legislators are back with more anti-individual, corporate dick-sucking. This time they are characterizing tort deform legislation as jobs-creating:
http://wsau.com/news/articles/.....rt-reform/
These guys have no limits when it comes to hubris.
@53 “[T]he bill’s author, Republican state Senator Rich Zipperer, said the prospect of lawsuits act as a deterrent to pharmaceutical companies developing new products. ‘Look at the drugs and the devices that are never approved or never researched or never brought through the process, because of the costs of lawsuits, and because of the costs in these cases’ he said. ‘These are potentially live saving drugs that may never see the market.'”
What bullshit. For plaintiffs to recover damages there must be both injury and negligence. Manufacturers never pay jury awards on safe products, only unsafe ones.
typo @49 “look” not “like”
Roger @ 54
Additionally, given the massive profits of the pharmaceutical industry, do you think it ever considers the threat of lawsuits in determining which products to move to market? And, given that pharmaceutical companies market their products worldwide, presumably exposed to lawsuits anywhere, why would Merck think about moving operations to Wisconsin because of its immunity from suit there? Complete lie. And, Zipperer says the attorneys he knows will take a meritous case, regardless of the potential fee. What fucking world does he live in? He is, simply, a liar.
53 – Oh that tort deform was responsible for that “Texas Miracle” that’s catapulting Rick Perry from dissembling dumbass to… uh whatever..
These right wing morons must be defeated, vanquished totally.
http://www.dnj.com/article/201.....-quits-ID-
I’m so sick and tired of this shit.
An act of right wing terrorism against occupiers in Portland, Maine:
http://www.pressherald.com/new.....pment.html
@47:
Jesse LaGreca, the articulate OWSer in that video (which, BTW, was shot about three weeks old), was at Occupy Seattle today. I couldn’t get away from work to join him for lunch, but several other dKos readers did.
More Jesse LaGreca (on Kiro-FM):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INsxBCtlc20
Very impressive..
I sure am glad the newies explained what a kitchen is…
How about, rather than getting them a better deal on their shitty loan that they can’t afford, getting them out of the loan?
@62
lol
MOron@42,
Did Fox News hire Eliot Spitzer?
Whatabuffoon arschloch!
Don’t Bogart that joint my friend, it put a lot of C02 into the air to make it.
‘Course if it were legal they wouldn’t have to grow it indoors, under grow lights any more.
Did some moronic walking dead idiot fart that Eliot Spitzer is cut from the same cloth as the rank and file Dem???
Hardly.. Came from wealth. You take him at his word and deeds…
Now Sarah Palin??? As looney tunes as any walking dead cretin out there.. And somnambulists are the Faux News audience.
Eliot Spitzer, DUMMOCRAPT. No more needed to be said!
Another DUMMOCRAPT involved in fraud!
DUMMOCRAPTS and money… it disappears and no one can find it.
This is what the 99% are up against. How do you counter that?
and the occupy movement disappears from the consciousness with barely a wimper.
its not even news anymore…not even on HA. LMFAO.
re 71: A more appropriate moniker for you would be Born on Third.
One of our trolls (I forget which) posted what looked like a rather inauthentic video of a cartoonish thug berating a diminutive, long-haired man in a yarmulke in a most vile and anti-semitic way.
My suspicion was that it represented theater, a la James O’Keefe, but I had no evidence, admittedly. Here is some more eye-witness reporting, from Cohen of the WAPO:
It does seem that the prior reports of anti-semitism turn out to have been more dishonest bullshit from the right. Quelle surprise!
It goes along with KKKarl Rove’s plan of attack on all things good and rights: attack a very popular proposal to build roads and hire firefighters by calling them – GASP – UNION WORKERS!
Got to clean out all those Occupy sites. Cannot have the bad press that something is wrong with the American economy. Dissent that is not controlled and sanitized and spun, is NOT allowed.
Please take care of that.
http://images1.dailykos.com/i/.....kfosho.jpg
If puddypussy wouldn’t do the “moral pollution” he probably wouldn’t lie so much and tehjesus would probably like him better.
Doesn’t the puddypussy remember that to lie is to sin?
Poor, sad puddypussy.
Speaking at the IATA conference in Singapore, Delta Airlines manager of technical operations Harry Chowbey discussed the state of outsourcing of what is known in the industry as “MRO” – maintenance, repair, and overhaul.
The days of cheap MRO work in Singapore, Mexico, and Central America are over, he declared. Wage rates overseas have been rising, to the point where wages in Hong Kong (HAECO) and Singapore (SASCO) are as high or higher than in the U.S.
And airlines are finding that they need to manage outsourced MRO work much more closely than they originally anticipated to avoid getting hit with overage charges, improperly performed airframe overhauls, and delays in meeting the dock-out date.
In a way it’s good news – it means U.S. MRO facilities will be getting back more of that work. But it’s also bad news in that it’s just another sign that the wages of U.S. workers continue to decline, where we can’t even keep up with the Chinese.
But note that he rererenced Hong Kong, but didn’t mention MRO facilities in Shanghai and Xiamen (TAECO), where the Chinese government has invested heavily in the development of MRO facilities and capabilities.
Quote of the Day:
“”In order to keep a true perspective of one’s importance, everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that will ignore him.”
— Dereke Bruce, Taipei, Taiwan
Poll: Ohio’s Anti-Union Law Is On The Ropes
The day of truth is approaching for the GOP’s union-busting scheme in Ohio. Although Ohio Republicans passed a law similar to Wisconsin’s, to keep it on the books they have to pass “Issue 2” in next month’s election. But polls show Issue 2 heading for a resounding defeat:
“A new Quinnipiac Poll released Tuesday showed that 57 percent of Ohio voters oppose Issue 2, while 32 percent favor it. If Issue 2 is defeated, the Senate Bill 5 will be repealed.”
If these polling numbers hold up at the ballot box, Ohio’s public workers will get their bargaining rights back, and GOP union-busters will suffer a stinging rebuke.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45024409/ns/politics/
Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, where a signature drive is currently underway to put recall of GOP Gov. Scott Walker on next spring’s ballot, recent polling indicates recall has strong support among independent voters and a majority of all voters disapprove of how Walker is doing his job.
http://www.politiscoop.com/us-.....ecall.html
Roger Rabbit Current Events Quiz
Anyone want to guess what’s inside this metal tank?
http://tinyurl.com/3d2x8f6
“Eight NYPD officers and one New Jersey corrections officer have been arrested on charges that they were running a gun-smuggling ring that trafficked more than $1 million in illegal weapons and stolen goods. …
“According to the criminal complaint, some of those arrested smuggled 20 firearms as recently as Sept. 22. The cache included three M-16 rifles, one shotgun and 16 handguns, most of which had their serial numbers removed.
“One officer bragged to an informant in July, as an associate displayed a shotgun for sale, that it was a ‘sample’ and that they could get anything ‘from A to Z.'”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45.....w_york_ny/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I saw a used Russian submarine for sale on eBay a few years ago. I don’t want one of those (too much upkeep), but could you guys get me a tank? I don’t intend to use it; I just want to park it in my driveway as a status symbol, because none of my neighbors has one.
Perry: Financial Industry Was Over-Regulated
“Rick Perry suggested Tuesday that government regulators rather than Wall Street bankers were behind the financial collapse of 2008 … [in an] interview with CNBC’s John Harwood.
“‘You think the previous regulation of Wall Street was adequate?’ Harwood asked.
“‘Yes, absolutely, I think it was adequate,’ Perry said.”
http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.co.....s-adequate
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Some people are uneducable.
# 80: My guess is that it’s the most powerful nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal, which is set to be dismantled this week.
I think # 82 and # 37 say pretty much the same thing. Republicans always say the same thing, they just insert whichever noun happens to be the subject of the day (i.e., the response for the Titanic and Wall Street are the same – which is rather ironic, if you think about it).
RR @ 87: “…Roger Rabbit Commentary: Some people are uneducable.”
Or as they say where I grew up… “You can’t fix stupid”.
Speaking of Republican talking points….
Here’s a short Republican dictionary. It’s short, because Republicans don’t think for themselves, and have a short attention span.
Republican Dictionary
Dang, Rog beat me to it @81. Those guys are seriously busted.
@80 I agree with RHP – that looks a lot like an older generation thermonuclear weapon, pre-miniturization, pre-oblate geometry, pre-pack 12 of ’em on the top of a Trident.
How does the saying go, it’s impossible to educate one who’s livlihood depneds on not understanding.
Republicans are not allowed to be rational, or to derive understandign from objective observation of the natural world. The primary voters will not allow it.
#83 You must have read the photo caption! 9 megatons to be exact, 600 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. Designed as a silo-buster. What’s interesting about this photo is you don’t see any armed military or police guards standing next to it. What’s to stop that forklift driver from heading out the gate with it? I suppose his supervisor would yell at him, but …
# 90: I didn’t read the caption, I just caught a headline in the news this morning, and the picture looked like – well, a very big bomb, what with the fins and everything.
By the way, did you change the spelling of your name, or did you develop a heavy Yankee accent?
Really Spokane? Really?
I like you, Spokane, and I try to stick up for you when people dump on you, but you’re not making that easy for me lately.
Major voter fraud in Frisco–
http://www.foxnews.com/politic.....yors-race/
Anyone surprised?
Great cellphone videos.
Sanctuary City for Cheating Politicians too??
Gardening is a subversive activity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ezuz_-eZTMI
# 92: Apparantly, that driver used to work for Southwest Airlines.
Southwest has a history of it’s flight attendants and gate personnel enforcing whatever cultural standards they happen to believe in that day upon their passengers. They often refuse to carry ticketed passengers based on whatever strikes them at the moment.
Among the reasons given for denying access on the flight include “inappropriate dress” (skirts or shorts too short, cleavage not completely concealed); “disruptive and obnoxious language” (a mild curse word was heard); “drunken behavior” (a bereaved passenger was crying as she was boarding a flight to attend her father’s funeral); “wearing disruptive attire” (wearing clothing containing a political message which the flight attendant doesn’t agree with); or the one which gets you detained by the authorities: “Interfering with a flight crew” (asking the flight attendant for a reasonable explanation why they are being told to leave the airplane).
Major institutionalized voting fraud in the form of suppression by right wing degenerates in Tennessee:
http://newsone.com/nation/news.....an-denied/
Anyone surprised?
LMAO!!! When power-crazed right wing wannabes like Trump and scary Rick Perry the dumbass are feeling a bit insecure, they start playing the birther card..
Too damn funny! Playing the birther card is a sure thing to draw out the Republican primary crazies.
But good old GOP boy Haley Barbour says NO!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....30520.html
Go Maine!
Btw, you’d think the Republican’s would be all for this sort of thing seeing how they’re for small government, local control, and freedom and such, but the Republicans in federal offices fight against this sort of thing every time. They’re really just corporatists.
“Being offended by the GLBT and their supporters”, the last refuge for bigots and racists. They know they cannot kick anyone off the bus anymore for being black, but anything associated with GLBT is still fair game.
Dang this is good
http://www.rollingstone.com/po.....g-20111025
98. The town unanimously passed an ordinance giving its citizens the right “to produce, process, sell, purchase, and consume local foods of their choosing.”
What happens when someone’s toddler inevitably dies of bad milk sometime in the future? Do we shug and say “sucks to be them”?
What are the consequences of this?
http://whatreallyhappened.com/....._ohio.html
“fleabaggerssuck” sucks.
A birther on steroids!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....31352.html
Seen the outbreaks of e coli and listeria we’ve had lately? The industrial food chain doesn’t ensure safety. Outbreaks will happen in either system. In this one they should be smaller scale and easier to police.
What is happening to the Fleabaggers by the way?
They seem to have disappeared. Obama wants their energy, but doesn’t want their lunacy.
Obama is only at ease campaigning.
Governing is his definite shortcoming.
@105
It appears that they’re killing jobs and inspiring riots. Who knows, our media’s useless.
Wow. The latest talking point from the right wing idiots is that the occupiers have gone home…
Who’d thunk it?
Nice try but it fails…
http://occupywallst.org/
@93 Nice. Bet you didn’t know the county Democratic chairman asked for an investigation into this guy …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_M._Lee
… and his campaign finances are the subject of a criminal probe.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....09517.html
Hard to tell whether this guy is a sleazebag or just a bungling novice surrounded by overzealous supporters. Hizzoner was appointed to the job and is in his first political race (after breaking a pledge not to seek election to the post). I couldn’t find a party affiliation and he apparently doesn’t have one, having spent his career up to now as a city bureaucrat.
Notwithstanding the crowing by Faux, Freep, you, and others in the rightwing Screechosphere, I don’t think anyone owns this scandal, except the mayor and his misguided supporters; it’s certainly not a “gotcha” against any Democratic group. The local Democratic party chair apparently wants him in jail.
@107 The birthers just can’t stand it that somebody is protesting the systematic greed of a crooked gang that tends to give money to Republicans and vote for Republicans.
The Next Credit Bubble …
Student loan debt now exceeds credit card debt in the U.S. We’re talking roughly $1 trillion. I’m seeing reference to student debt as “the next bubble,” i.e., this is a debt America’s young can’t possibly repay (with or without jobs, but especially without jobs), and someone’s going to take a haircut (think banks, followed by government bailout).
Nobody really seems to be preparing for it. Once Republicans fixed things so student debtors couldn’t get bankruptcy relief, predatory leanders piled in like moths trying to get to a flame. They reasoned these loans were default-proof because borrowers couldn’t get rid of them under the bankruptcy laws. They may have miscalculated. If borrowers can’t pay, creditors won’t be repaid, no matter what the bankruptcy law says.
But there’s a move afoot now in Congress to change the bankruptcy law. And some economists are beginning to call for a massive writedown of student debt as a means to revive the debt-mired U.S. economy. Lenders who thought they could collect usury-rate interest on bankruptcy-proof signature loans may yet discover these risk-free loans were riskier than they ever dreamed.
The riots in the streets by the debtor class haven’t started yet. Right now, they’re merely camping in public squares and waving signs. We’ll see how long it takes for that to morph into debt relief legislation.
My guess is that 99% outvotes 1% every time, once they’re mobilized.
@107
The LA Times was saying that there were “a handful” of protests going on when there were 150 of them going on.
We’ve Seen This Before
“Against the backdrop of a plastics factory, Gov. Rick Perry held up a postcard-size form to illustrate the simplicity of his new flat-tax based economic plan.”
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com.....nomic-plan
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Reminds me of an old joke that goes like this:
SIMPLIFIED 2-LINE TAX FORM
Line 1: How much money did you make last year?
Line 2: Send it in.
Here’s Rick Perry’s postcard tax form:
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MS.....ryPlan.pdf
For those of you too lazy to click on the link …
Your 2014 Income $_________________
Subtract: __ Exemptions x $12,500
Subtract: Mortgage Interest
Subtract: Charitable Contributions
Subtract: State & Local Taxes
Subtract: Capital Gains & Dividends
Your Taxable Income: $______________
x 20% = Taxes Owed
Now, the first thing you should notice here is that capital gains and dividends aren’t taxed at all. So here’s what Warren Buffet’s tax return might look like:
Your 2014 Income: $75,100,000
Subtract 2 Exemptions x $12,500 = $25,000
Subtract Mortgage Interest = $15,000
Subtract Charitable Contributions = $1,500,000
Subtract State & Local Taxes = 12,000
Subtract Capital Gains & Dividends =- $75,000,000
Your Taxable Income = – $1,452,000
Taxes Owed = $290,400 REFUND
They just don’t give up, do they? Republicans are determined to exempt capital gains and dividends — which comprise most or nearly all of the income of the super-wealthy — from taxation so that only wage earners will have to pay taxes.
I wonder how many people making over $1 million a year wouldn’t have enough mortgage interest on their $5 million homes and charitable donations to cancel out all of their “taxable income” under Perry’s scheme? Probably none of them would pay any taxes. Ever.
Here’s how Rick Perry’s tax scheme would affect a senior citizen with a modest pension, social security, a little investment income, a paid-for home, and medical expenses:
Pension: $9,000
Social security: $13,200
Dividends: $1,200
Income: $23,400
Subtract exemption: $12,500
Subtract mortgage interest: $0
Subtract charitable contributions: $150
Subtract state & local taxes: $3,650
Subtract capital gains & dividends: $1,200
Taxable income: $5,900
Tax: $1,180
Expenses: Medical insurance and copays: $8,600
Taxes: $4,830
Donations: $150
Home insurance & utility bills: $3,300
Amount left for food, clothing, car repairs, car insurance & gas, and other expenses: $6,520 ($543.33 a month)
Under current law this taxpayer would be taxed on only 85% of his social security income so his adjusted gross income would be $21,420. He could claim a personal exemption of $3,700 and standard deduction of $5,800 but probably would take itemized deductions for medical expenses over 6% of AGI, state and local taxes, and charitable contributions totaling $11,115 resulting in taxable income of $6,605. His ordinary income would be taxed at 10% and dividends at 0%, so his tax would be $540. Under Perry’s plan, he would pay more than twice as much. Under existing law, he would have an extra $53.33 a month for personal expenses — which matters a lot when you have only $543.00 a month to begin with.
I don’t see why any low-income senior citizen — with or without a medical deduction — would vote for Rick Perry or his cockamamie tax plan.
And if the rich are suddenly exempted from paying any taxes at all on their capital gains and investment income, what does that do to the deficit?
Does it count that some places are charging occupiers $1000 a day. Is it fair to say “the occupiers have gone home” when the powers that be have fined them into oblivion. Yeah, your side forced them to go home, while they still had one.
Some idiot on the tee-vee tonight was talking about how it takes people 13 hours just to do their taxes. This idiot has never heard of Turbo Tax. It takes me about an hour and a half.
***************************
I’m all for getting rid of income tax deductions. Kids and roads are a major part of government spending and yet we give people write offs for kids and houses in suburbia. Why give people write offs for the expensive shit? We ought to be charging them a per kid fee!
@91 Typo. Shit happens.
@117 I wonder why conservatives haven’t picked up on the fact that deductions and credits cause economic distortions. The granddaddy of them all, of course, is the mortgage deduction.
Full Disclosure: Roger Rabbit owns his burrow free and clear, so doesn’t get a mortgage deduction, and won’t pay higher taxes if the mortgage deduction is eliminated. On the other hand they’d damn well better not fool with the medical expense deduction, in fact, the 6% threshold should be eliminated and all medical expenses should be deductible! And they should increase the mileage allowance for medical travel to the same amount as business travel!
Carl, why do you keep posting Erica Basset articles? Has she ever written one where she isn’t twisting the truth to fit her fantasy world?
I can kind of forgive this one because the SDOT was also twisting the numbers and she just parroted them, but she could have at least given a link to their study.
http://www.seattle.gov/transpo.....0final.pdf
Perfect case study in Lies, Damn lies, and Statistics.
@117 Kids and roads are a major part of government spending and yet we give people write offs for kids and houses in suburbia. We ought to be charging them a per kid fee!
In a pure pay as you go society, in a pure capitalistic one, with no socialist load sharing, that would happen. Kids and elderly use more services so they would pay more often. You got leukemia or a stoke, pay up, full price.
Suburbia would need higher rates because there are less people density for the same services. You want to live 20 miles on a 1/4 acre, you need to pay for that luxury.
Perry was complaining about the size of the tax code, and insisting it could be reduced to the size of the post card he was holding.
I’m well familiar with the tax code. It isn’t nearly as big as the shipping pallot load of paper he was pointing to. It does quite a few volumes of books on a bookshelve, but it’s far from being a pallot-load of paper boxes. I’d say that he must be thinking of all the IRS regulations interpreting and applying the tax code, as well as all court and tax court decisions related thereto, but I’m sure Perry doesn’t think that intelligent to think through that process. He just liked the visual image of a pallet full of paper.
As for the post-card tax return, we pretty much have it already. It’s called the 1040-EZ form. Everything else is for people trying to save taxes by deducting other things. Even the question of what is, and what is not, “income” takes up about a volume of the tax code. Perry’s simplistic attempt to appeal to the simple-minded ignores that fact.
@121 Right, definitions take up far more space in the tax code than the actual tax provisions do. It will still take a sizeable instruction book to fill out Perry’s postcard return because you’d still have to describe in detail what is, and isn’t, included for each line. And it won’t take Congress 10 minutes to start engrafting exclusions, exemptions, and credits onto each of those definitions.
@121, 122
You just bring up Turbo tax on your computer and fill in the blanks, easy as pie.