– Rick Warren is a real piece of work.
– Fuse’s progressive voters guide.
– Rob McKenna running away from Essex Porter is pretty great.
– I assume Darryl will have more analysis of this Elway Poll, but without wanting to get too excited over one poll, Inslee up 43-36 is good news.
– Jean Godden has a great remembrance of J.P. Patches.
Looks like Goldy has company now.
I gather that KIRO-TV is not real media, and Essex Porter is a partisan hack. Or so I’m told by the AG’s office.
It’s a shame that in local TV news, real reporters who have both the experience and the willingness to ask the right questions can be counted on one finger. Poor Essex. He’s in the wrong business these days.
OMG. Just OMG.
Watch this, if you have the stomach, it’s hilarious!
I couldn’t help but think of Maxie and Cereal, in turn – old clueless white guy who can’t sing, braying on about Obama not able to run on his record….
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!
How tiresome – Rick Warren, megagrifterforjesus, blames evolution…for, um, something…I’m sure puddles is relieved.
Was Jay Inslee’s response any more forthcoming? Something like ‘Today is not a day for policy debate. Today is a day for reflection.’
No video so no gotcha moment on Inslee, but what was the difference between what he told Porter and what Porter got from McKenna?
Accumulations of video of McKenna avoiding questions aren’t going to be helpful to him down the stretch, certainly.
Carl and Lib Sci
Read the effin quote. Warren said that things like Aurora happen when students are no different than animals.
I am no fan of Warren’s, but this sort of bigotry would lump Cesar Chavez and Albert Einstein with Sarah Palin and Billy Graham’s son.
Last year Spain’s liberal President was replaced with a more conservative one, who instituted higher sales taxes and budget cuts, including cutting one paycheck per year from the the pay of law enforcement and firefighters. The result? A double-dip recession. Now 1/4 of Spain’s employment pool is out of work, a figure which rises to over 50% for those graduating from college.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....asons.html
Yes, Spain spent too much during the heady years of a debt-fueled bull market, led by a real estate bubble (similar to that experienced in the U.S., only greater). But it’s also clear that a nation can’t cut your way to prosperity, either.
Cutting debt works on a micro-economic level, if a family or business or individual town were to do so. But when everybody does it at once (a macro-economic situation), the economy grinds to a halt, tax revenues plunge, and you end up with higher debt than you had at the beginning.
Fuse’s Progressive Voter Guide is interesting, though they split the difference a bit much.
In my legislative district, they back Noel Frame most strongly, which is great, but also give nods to Brett Phillips and Sahar Fathi, which is disappointing.
At 36th events I’ve gone to, I’ve found Fathi OK, but a bit too…clique-y? I know that’s vague, but a gut instinct on my part. There’s a wiff of the high school ‘cool kids’ around her, and she seems to have the backing of some of the more divisive elements of the nasty Carlyle/Burbank fight of 2008.
What’s really disappointing, in my opinion, is the support, albeit tepid, for Brett Phillips. Son of King County councilman Larry, Brett is clearly leveraging his dad’s connections and money – the nepotism is strong with this one. I’ve heard a lot of grumbling from people pissed that they’re put in the position of either angering elder Phillips or supporting a youngster with no real accomplishments. I was watching him the other day work the room at a 36th meeting – he hit every person of position or power with a handshake and a profoundly fake smile – stuff that makes my skin crawl. I’d have been much more impressed if he’d gone somewhere outside of his father’s penumbra and run on his own merits. It’s not clear to me, actually, that he’s even moved out of the parents’ basement in Magnolia.
@5
No, Steve, you re-read the quote:
Warren:
Your characterization:
I hope your analytic skills are not going the way of your typing skills ;)
Warren’s tweet is obviously an assault on something being taught that equates humans with animals, from the POV of an evangelical – evolution.
@ 6
Is the lesson that cutting debt causes the markets to plunge? Or that raising taxes in a declining economy is doing it?
Hard to know, when both actions are happening concurrently.
@4
Yeah, I think there’s a bit of a difference between answering a question about the gun show loophole by saying you’d close it and “run away, run away.”
McKenna’s behavior is a tad bit odd. Inslee’s is perfectly normal.
I’m out of here, busy day today.
Some reactions to McKenna’s race from Essex Porter:
1. “I’ve got to run! There’s a big black man running after me!”
2. The campaign event was hailed as a “Women for McKenna” event. I’m not sure, but it looks like it was located at the Fairmont-Olympic Hotel – nice digs, if you can afford it. It appears to have been attended mostly by older reliably Republican women. The big “Women for McKenna” banners were obviously for the TV cameras – apparantly McKenna felt he was falling behind in that demographic. But other women complained they were barred from entry, it was apparantly an “invitation only” event staged for the media.
Swear I have not thought of Rick Warren since 2008. Purpose-driven what?
Here’s his explanation:
TWITTER’S limit on words allows no context for statements. A lack of contxt causes misinterpretation. So when you tweet what’s on your mind, people preassume (incorrectly) that you are talking about what’s on THEIR mind. This is a clear example. My tweet was a brief response to a question to me about SEXUAL PROMISCUITY. It had NOTHING to do with the tragedy in Colorado.! I had received this email from a dad: “Pastor Rick, my daughter told me her teacher said in class “There’s nothing wrong with sex with multiple partners! Sex is a natural, inate drive, and any attempt to limit it to one, single partner is a manmade construct.” THAT is what I was commenting on. Unfortunately, you also incorrectly presumed the context.
Interestingly, Warren responded via Twitter as well following the controversy, seemingly corroborating his response to McGrath. “No context causes misinterpretation: When u tweet what’s on your mind, people assume ur talking about what’s on THEIR mind,” he wrote on Sunday.
http://www.theblaze.com/storie.....bly-wrong/
Myself, since there was nothing I have read that suggests that James Holmes was herded into an educational system like cattle or otherwise treated like an animal, I was wondering why Warren would suddenly suggest it. Maybe he didn’t.
# 9: True enough, in Spain’s case, both are happening simultaniously. The sales tax gain hurts bad because it hits the very people hit hardest by unemployment and budget cuts, and takes away the demand for goods which the economy needs in order to recover.
In the U.S., sales tax rates have remained pretty constant, even though local and state budgets are straining as revenues plunged due to a multi-year rescession. Some sales taxes were approved on a case-by-case basis, to fund specific items.
On the national level, the Bush tax cuts on the middle class have pretty mcuh become untouchable, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are willing to broach that revenue source. The fighting has been over the tax cuts on the top income tiers – although the Republicans in the House are holding the middle class tax cuts hostage in return for keeping the tax cuts on the highest earners. They actually wouldn’t mind seeing the entire tax cuts expire while playing their game of chicken – they would then blame the President for raising taxes on the middle class, even though the President doesn’t want to do that.
Of course, the Republicans are campaigning on the idea of cutting taxes and reducing the deficit, which can’t be done (it’s a ressurection of the failed “Laffler Curve” argument which Reagan adopted and George H.W. Bush called “voodoo economics”.). So what they really want is to cut the budget from benefits to the poor and middle class in order to fund tax cuts to the wealthy.
“…KIRO-TV is not real media…”
Nor is any other media outlet. Journalism really doesn’t exist anymore. It’s just advocacy of one point of view or another. I gave up on the ABC, CBS, and NBC folks – all they do in the evening is give their opinions of the day’s events. What makes their opinions any more valid than anyone else’s opinion? Are they really and truly that arrogant that they believe their opinios are moral values?
They were going to hold this meeting:
Rep. Jackson Lee will seek meeting with NRA about response to Colo. shootings
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor.....o-shooting
in Chicago, but:
Cops: 6 shot in 15-minute span, teen killed
More than a dozen wounded in the city since Monday night
http://www.chicagotribune.com/.....2962.story
someone decided maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.
I guess the gun control laws in Chicago need a little work, huh?
At minimum, it might not be simple.
Will Banning Guns Prevent Another Aurora?
by Richard A. Epstein (Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow and member of the Property Rights, Freedom, and Prosperity Task Force)
Once more, America gropes for a magic bullet.
http://www.hoover.org/publicat.....cle/123236
@ 13
While you are blaming GOP for the game of ‘chicken’ in letting all tax cuts expire, next time please do not neglect to point out that a certain Senate Democrat from the fair state of Washington is doing pretty much the same thing:
Senator Patty Murray of Washington, a member of the Democratic leadership, said on Monday that her party is prepared to allow all of the Bush-era tax cuts to expire and for automatic spending cuts to kick in unless Republicans give up their opposition to tax increases on the wealthy.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.....ts-expire/
# 16: Like I said, it’s a game of chicken. It takes two to play that game, unless one side is willing to surrender without even trying. Democrats found that doing so (surrendering in advance), in the name of “bipartison compromise”, only emboldened Paul Ryan and his party, and they demanded yet more. So don’t expect us to repeat that.
What should happen, is that after all the grand-standing is done, is that Senate Democratic leadership and House Republican leadership should sit down and hammer out a compromise which keeps most of the Bush tax cuts on the middle class and the poor, and removes most of the tax breaks on the upper incomes. Maybe the Democrats can throw in a percentage point or two in the spirit of compromise. But given the experience over the past two years, I’m not expecting the Republicans to even consider such a common-sense approach.
# 14: In my experience, journalism has pretty much dissapeared, in lieu of papers and TV media publishing competing news releases. No real investigation there. Those of us who receive news releases regularly from companies via e-mail have to chuckle when, a few hours later, the news release re-appears on the local paper’s web pages, almost word-for word with only a few slight wording changes or extra “boilerplate” thrown in.
@ 17
Your first paragraph – not sure what you are referring to but I recall the ‘grand bargain’ that was discussed last summer, and a framework of $800B in new revenues agreed to, before Obama came back and demanded $400B more, which threw the whole thing into the shitter.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....story.html
Maybe I’m having a brain freeze on something more recent.
Obama is absolutely shameless..although most of us already know that. Obama’s guys give Solyndra $500 Million of taxpayer $$ to flush down the toilet. The Solyndra bigwigs were big Obama contributors in 2008. Now, despite the massive loss and questionable actions…these same thieves are paying $35,000+/person to Obama at a fundraiser. Unbelievable.
[Excessively copied materials deleted.
Look, ev, you copied 269 of the article’s 315 words. That’s called Theft. If you continue to do that, we will be forced to hold your comments for review.]
Funny, all McKenna had to say to Essex Porter is that he was evaluating the state’s options with regard to the Supreme Court decisions, and would comment on it later. That would be enough for him to get by.
But McKenna is so fixated on his campaign’s strategy to only appear in front of friendly audiences, that he really doesn’t want to answer any questions at all from the media if he isn’t fully prepared for a debate. In other words, he can’t think on his feet well in the face of changing circumstances. Reminds me a bit of Confederate General Braxton Bragg, who couldn’t be convinced that he had won a major victory at Chickamauga because it hadn’t happened in the manner he had planned.
@ 20
I saw that. I actually posted something yesterday:
http://horsesass.org/?p=44904#comment-1168445
but I meant it as a joke. I didn’t really think he’d associate with Solyndra-types after what happened.
What’s next, a reunion with Jon Corzine?
Been gone SC. It’s very telling about the arrogance and mental illness Obama suffers from…and has now infected America.
obama seems to feel this overwhelming sense of entitlement..with little grasp of business/economy and the real world.
Check this out
This guy’s widow is livid at Obama. Great commercial
[Excessively Copied Materials Deleted — Recommendation: Provide a link instead of copying text]
SC @ 22-
I think we probably have to post some of these FACTS about obama’s conduct more than once for the lefty’s to even have a chance of understanding what a prick obama is.
Butchers at Planned Prenthood-
This just happened in Obama’s hometown of Chi-Town.
A woman died of injuries she received during an abortion at a local Planned Parenthood clinic Friday.
@2 I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t get through the whole thing — I split my gut laughing!
@4 The master of avoiding questions is GOP standard-bearer Grabster R-Money. He wants to spend on defense, cut taxes for the rich, and reduce deficits but won’t show us the math. The closest he’s come is promising to tell us someday. He must think he can get away with hiding his intentions until after the election.
The math is actually pretty simple. The only way you can spend on defense, cut taxes, and reduce deficits all at the same time is by axing non-defense spending, i.e., taking it from the hungry, unemployed, and seniors.
http://tinyurl.com/d3tr5c8
@6 “a nation can’t cut your way to prosperity”
Bingo! Austerity is failing spectacularly in Europe. But no amount of real-world experience will ever shake conservatives off their Grover Nordquist ideology. And they’re determined to take all the rest of us down with them.
Let’s mail bloody coat hangers to this fuck, shall we?
@14 Well there is, in fact, right and wrong; and moral and immoral. Someone has to mediate the question of when and how these factors bear upon public issues that affect everyone. For example, is it journalistic opinion to call the Colorado shootings “horrific” and an “atrocity”? Yes, but we don’t expect the media to be neutral about things like this.
Traditionally, the role of news editors was to parse the day’s happenings and exercise their professional judgment about which were important enough to merit our time and attention. We wanted them to do so.
In tandem with the Information Explosion, that traditional editorial function has largely broken down, and many people now self-edit, selecting only the information that confirms what they already believe, ignoring and screening out everything else. The result is a less, not more, informed society which is more, not less, vulnerable to demagoguery and blind followership of the sort that leads societies and nations into the abyss.
Poor quality journalism panders to this tendency. We saw it during the Vietnam War when the major media reported a distorted picture of what was happening on the battlefield that confirmed a popular meme that we were losing the war. (In fact, the 1968 Tet Offensive was a devastating defeat for the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese.) In the world of financial news, it’s almost axiomatic that the best time to buy stocks is when the media mood is gloomiest. Today we are drowning in punditry while even as newsroom budgets collapse, reporting staffs shrink, and real news reporting shrivels. It’s much cheaper to put an anchor in front of a TV camera and have him just talk than it is to pay an army of people to pound pavements and find out what’s going on in the world.
So, your complaint to a certain extent is a valid one, but the remedy isn’t to patronize propaganda outlets like Fox News and Murdoch’s papers, because merely offsetting rightwing talking points with leftwing talking points (or vice versa) doesn’t expose you to an objective view of the world around you. That isn’t news; it’s merely pointless arguing that goes nowhere.
It’s perhaps harder now to get hard information from reliable sources, and with much of the professional editing function gone, you have to do the work yourself now. In many cases, you have to go to biased sources, and cull the factual from the opinionated. This requires a level of cognitive and reasoning skills many people don’t have. But it’s still possible if you’re smart enough, educated enough, intellectually honest enough, and willing to work at it.
@20 “Obama’s guys give Solyndra $500 Million of taxpayer $$ to flush down the toilet.”
Do you recall the Iraq War, back when the same neocons lurking behind Romney decided that it was a good idea to start a war against a country that didn’t attack us on 9/11? Do you recall the pallet of US money, $8,000,000,000 or so, that disappeared and was never accounted for?
Tell me, did knowing that your side “lost” 8 billion bucks bother you 16 times more than does Solyndra? What, you’re not bothered at all? I didn’t think you would be.
@22 “I saw that.”
How about you, Bob? Your guy lost 8 billion. He lost it. In a foreign land full of terrorists. But you never talk about that, do you? You talk about Solyndra. And yet the same neocons who lost all that money are lurking behind your candidate today. Fuck, no wonder you won’t talk about it.
Star of Romney ‘My Hands Didn’t Build This’ Ad Received Millions in Government Loans and Contracts
The Romney campaign has been making much out of an out-of-context President Obama quote.
The New Hampshire Union Leader’s John DiStato today reports that in 1999 the business in question, Gilchrist Metal, “received $800,000 in tax-exempt revenue bonds issued by the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority ‘to set up a second manufacturing plant and purchase equipment to produce high definition television broadcasting equipment’…” In addition, in 2011, Gilchrist Metal “received two U.S. Navy sub-contracts totaling about $83,000 and a smaller, $5,600 Coast Guard contract in 2008…”
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/po.....contracts/
Romney lied. Again. What a surprise. Will our conservatives call him on that or just keep cheering their side, cause winning by any means is all that matters to them.
What Terrorizes Americans Most: Guns or Sexual Freedom?
America treats sex, not violence, as the biggest threat to families and the nation.
http://www.alternet.org/story/.....1&t=5
Cause Guns don’t kill, celebrating gay love does.
We got a messed up culture here.
Yet another in a long, long list of obama hutzpah. He has one of his own political lackey’s scoring the cost of obummercare. It’s getting so pathetic I wanna puke-
Obama needs to go.
I’m sure Melinda will be fair & objective…NOT!!
A woman died of injuries she received during an abortion at a local Planned Parenthood clinic Friday.
And how many died of gunshot wounds in Colorado?
If you are trying to argue that abortion should be illegal because one woman dies, I get to argue that assault weapons should be banned 12 times as much because of the nutcase in the Aurora massacre
Obama continues to be stuck around 46 Job Approval (between 44-48).
Gee, NPR has obama at 49%. Imagine that.
http://www.realclearpolitics.c.....-1044.html
The next needle mover will be the Republican Convention. I think Romney would be wise to wait until after the Olympics to announce his VP candidate..and possibly wait all the way to the Convention.
Obama is stuck in the mud.
He simply cannot move the needle as mean & awful as he gets. Obama cannot discuss his own record. That will end up being the deciding factor.
Owsers in seattle looking like clowns again…..
Rhp exposes his racist side for all to see……well done rhpee
16, 17 – Our politicians aren’t totally stupid. Actually, many of them are pretty smart. Lyndon Johnson famously called politics “the art of the possible.” In Congress, leaders on both sides are already “feeling” the terrain (in the same way that an infantry recon patrol does) to find common ground for a compromise. One may be possible, because neither party wants to be blamed for leading the country over a “fiscal cliff” that would plunge the economy back into another nasty recession.
I doubt that Congress will let all the tax cuts expire and spending sequestration take place on Dec. 31. Not much, if anything, will happen before the election but the lame duck Congress almost certainly will pass some sort of temporary extension to maintain the status quo long enough for the incoming (or re-elected) administration and Congress to deal with the tripartite problem of taxes, spending, and deficits.
On taxes, both parties appear to be gravitating toward lowering tax rates by broadening the tax base. A consensus seems to be emerging to streamline and rationalize the Tax Code by taking off some of the Christmas Tree ornaments it has collected over time — this hasn’t been done since 1986 so a lot of tinsel and ornaments is weighting the tree.
On spending, there is a deep philosophical and partisan divide between Republicans, who want to spend more or at least protect existing spending on defense, and strip government aid for citizens from the budget in line with their belief that such aid undermines individual initiative and productivity. Democrats want to trim the bloated defense budget, which has expanded 80% over the last decade, and protect social spending. There may be some room for compromise if Republicans are willing to give up some defense spending, as Democrats have already signaled their willingness to pare back on future growth in social spending. But the gap is so wide it will be difficult for them to reach a middle ground.
Deficit reduction isn’t a policy per se. Rather it’s the mathematical result of increasing revenue, decreasing spending, or a combination of both. Most experts argue it will take both, and this was the premise (and result) of the Simpson-Bowles Commission, which created a framework for Congress to follow that potentially could have provided a foundation on which to build a political compromise. Apparently the pressure to resolve the issue wasn’t yet great enough last year, because it ended in a standoff that left the issue unresolved, and Congress didn’t go down the Simpson-Bowles path. Instead, it postponed the Gunfight At The OK Corral until after the 2012 election, with both parties evidently hoping the elections will give them a stronger hand to play. Like a poker player throwing three of his cards and drawing new ones in hopes of filling a full house or straight flush. For both parties, the election result is more likely to be a pair.
Deficits and debt really aren’t a problem from the government’s point of view. The Federal Reserve can always print away debt. It’s a problem for the rest of us because printing creates inflation. Inflation isn’t a natural disaster, it’s a man-made phenomenon, always deliberate, and in reality a tax. It’s how governments raise taxes on recalcitrant citizens who are unwilling pay taxes that are levied directly and/or called “taxes.” Inflation is the perfect tax because it’s indirect, can’t be evaded, isn’t called a tax, and doesn’t have to be enacted by a legislative body which means politicians can escape blame for it.
A critical point that many people miss is that in a debt crisis, there is little difference between private and public debts, because private debts get nationalized. They migrate through the private banking system onto the balance sheets of government central banks as the latter take them over to prevent collapse of the former. This is what happened in the U.S. in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, and it’s happening in Europe now as the European Central Bank and other quasi-governmental and governmental financial institutions infuse capital into Europe’s tottering private banks by taking debt paper off their hands. When the private financial sector can no longer handle the volume of distressed debt, the system is saved by turning these debts into public liabilities. A visible example of this is the nationalizing of corporation pension obligations by moving them off company balance sheets into a qausi-public agency whose obligations are guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the federal government. Government can handle them because it has the power to print money in endless quantity.
Economist Stephanie Pomboy argued in this week’s Barron’s magazine that the world’s fiat currencies will collapse within 5 years, then economies will return to asset-backed “hard” currency systems (e.g., the gold standard). I don’t know whether she’s right or wrong; but I doubt it’ll happen as she describes. There’s no evidence we’re headed for hyperinflation.
But people need to understand there isn’t a monetary policy solution to the economy’s ailment. The underlying problem is weak demand and that can’t be solved by playing with liquidity because when the Federal Reserve gives cash to banks in exchange for Treasuries or debt securities, the new money doesn’t go into the economy from there, because banks won’t lend it to small businesses and individuals who want to borrow and would spend it. They use it to satisfy the higher capital requirements imposed by regulatory reform and are unwilling to take credit risks with it. Large corporations can borrow, but don’t need to, because they can meet their cash flow needs from the cash stashes they’ve hoarded since 2008. Consequently, the Federal Reserve is beating its head against a wall with its quantitative easings; much of that liquidity has gone straight into the financial markets where it has inflated commodity and stock prices, which does the overall economy little or no good.
Economics is an inexact science (arguably it’s more art than science), and there is much argument over whether the best way to jump-start the economy is with stronger government intervention, or eschewing policy initiatives and letting the markets’ self-healing mechanisms take over. What does seem clear is that austerity policies — raising taxes and cutting public spending — are counterproductive and make the situation worse, as we’re now seeing in Europe’s peripheral countries.
History tells us the most effective mechanism for ending depressions is war; which is an argument for Keynesian stimulus because what happens in wartime, of course, is massive deficit spending on war goods. But if historical experience is a guide, how well this works for the long run is highly questionable, as the two world wars bankrupted the British and French empires and their economies have never recovered to their former glory.
Perhaps the American Empire also is coming to an end. Plenty of thoughtful people argue we consumed too much and didn’t invest enough over the last several decades. But I feel very strongly the problem right now isn’t lack of investment capital — our economy is awash with capital companies can’t put to work — and for that reason investment-stimulating ideas like cutting taxes for the wealthy investor class won’t work. It’s very clear the problem isn’t lack of investment, but lack of demand, which means, to work, policies must put money in the hands of ordinary consumers who will spend it. Public works jobs, aid to states and cities, extended unemployment benefits, payroll tax holidays, and middle class tax cuts all do this. The “wealth effect” one gets from boosting stock prices with more quantitative easing apparently does not, as the stock market is too volatile to give shareholders a feeling of confidence that their paper gains are permanent and can be spent.
Romney is enslaved by, or at least beholden to, conservative ideology that only permits him to implement investment-stimulating policies. So it’s a given that his economic program isn’t going to work. Obama doesn’t have enough of a coherent economic program to hope for anything more than muddling through if he’s re-elected. I think Congress absolutely has to deal with the “fiscal cliff” and it would be helpful for Congress to tackle broad tax reform that targets special-interest tax provisions that create or perpetuate market distortions. I believe the fiat money system can continue to work and replacing it with an asset-based currency system would eventually hold back growth, getting worse in that respect as time goes on, until it would have to be replaced with another fiat system.
I think there is substantial merit to the arguments of those who contend the economy will recover faster and emerge stronger if we take sharp medicine now and get it over with, and I don’t want to see more quantitative easing or other monetary manuevers at this point. Another essential part of that is to quit pussyfooting with unpayable debts, recognize the inevitable, and write them off. The creditor class, of course, will take a haircut in the process; and if you favoring nationalizing all those losses and shifting them onto the backs of working-class taxpayers, I’ll be tempted to call you a socialist.
ev,
“Obama continues to be stuck around 46 Job Approval (between 44-48).”
The current RCP average approval for President Obama is 46.8.
On Aug 1, 2004, George W. Bush had an average approval of 46.3, with a 95% confidence interval of 45.64 to 46.86.
his racist side for all to see
@37 “That will end up being the deciding factor.”
I doubt it. The fact Republicans don’t have a viable candidate or platform will be the deciding factor. Obama will be re-elected as the default choice of the majority of voters, who have nowhere else to go.
Great post rabbit. Thanks
@35 I suspect their hope is more women will die from abortions if Planned Parenthood is shut down and abortion is moved back into alleys, which is what they want, because they believe abortion is murder and people who perform or get abortions deserve to die.
This is interesting:
http://nymag.com/news/frank-ri.....ca-2012-7/
It seems right wingers are really into “American exceptionalism” a term freaking STALIN coined. They (idiots like Gingrich and Rmoney) knee jerk to Obama’s avoidance of the phrase ignoring that every other President for the last 6 decades, D or R has barely uttered it as well.
Does us all a favor ylb, and don’t get behind the wheel of an f250…
@47 … so you can have that F-250 all to yourself? Typical Republican attitude.
The reality of this election is that most of the electoral votes are already locked up and only a handful are in play. And those EVs are in states that are doing relatively better economically and therefore GOP efforts to beat Obama over the head with the economy will get less traction.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/48303947
In addition, the GOP has a gender problem even in the wealthy class.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/48303283
Drove an Excursion once.
It sucked.
Me? Racist? That’s a laugh.
If we ever meet at Drinking Liberally, I’ll show you a picture of my extended family on my wife’s side. We’ve got just about every nation and culture represented. I’m the keeper of the family tree.
McKenna just strikes me as one who has very limited contact with minorities, and therefore operates on assumptions and stereotypes.
By the way, about ten years or so ago I read an article about the condition of I-5. The article pointed out that I-5 was constructed with an assumed lifespan of 50 years, based on traffic volumes then in effect. It’s not the pavement on top which is at issue, it’s the roadbed, which will require substantial time, money, and closures to repair.
So now we have I-5 through Washington State being over fifty years old, and just some spot maintenance. There’s no money in the state budget for major re-building, and you can forget about significant federal aid – at least not while the Republicans control the House.
Yesterday, a big chunk of concrete came loose and crashed through the window of a car, hitting the driver in the chest.
Deteriorating Roads Could Lead to Tragedy
Of course, the federal Interstate system was approved and begun during the Eisenhower administration, when Federal taxes were at their highest levels upon high-income individuals. What we need now is (a) a reversal of the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest individuals; (b) kicking a good number of Republican House members to the curb; and (c) state tax reform to replace the outmoded B&O tax with a reasonable business income tax.
@ 48
I have a F250. Bought used with 80+K miles and 14 years old. It’s a 7.5L engine and gets 10 miles to the gallon. Drove it today because it’s got a door in it, a door I pulled out of a house that’s been knocked down and will have reinstalled in a different house. We loan it out to people who need an 8 x 4 bed for moving stuff around.
It also hauls trees, water, and anything else I need it to haul for a large piece of property we are reforesting.
We use it for its intended purpose and it otherwise sits. It will last another 30 years before it’s junked, unlike the disastrous Cash for Clunkers tradeins, many of which were very serviceable vehicles and had long lives ahead of them if there wasn’t an artificial reason to turn them into junk, all so we could hand money to Toyota and Honda.
Per mile driven, I’m probably kinder to the environment than you are, RR. Wife has the longest commute and she drives a Prius.
@ 52
during the Eisenhower administration, when Federal taxes were at their highest levels upon high-income individuals.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but did we also not have a far smaller percentage of our population taking money out of the system back then?
@ 52
Did you mean to say business income tax rather than personal income tax?
You libbies really love making sure the tax burden always falls on someone else, don’t you?
# 55: I said “business income tax”, not a personal income tax. That’s another issue.
The current B&O taxes only apply to businesses, so it makes sense to replace them with a more workable alternative. The current B&O tax is an unwieldy patchwork of GROSS income taxes, riddled with exceptions and favorable rates for the biggest businesses, and hitting hardest at the small business owner.
I fill out those B&O forms and pay those taxes myself, so I’m not passing the burden to someone else, I just want a more level playing field.
…anybody seen ev yet?
He’s still lost.
# 53: Obviously, you haven’t been around long enough to know RR’s driving and car ownership habits. He’s not exactly a power commuter, either.
Sherm Hemsley died–
I always thought he was one funny guy.
@ 59
Hopefully he’s ‘Movin’ on up’.
@53 You can haul the same stuff with a $20 trailer rental from U-Haul provided your car has a hitch. And no, it won’t last 30 years sitting around, a vehicle deteriorates whether it’s driven or not — unless you have a hermetically sealed garage to keep it in, which most of us don’t.
@54 No. We had a huge number of veterans in schools on G.I. Bill dole back then. Those educated veterans then built a thriving middle class.
@55 He’s talking about replacing a bad tax on businesses with a fairer tax on businesses, jackass. The small business community has wanted this for a long time. They’d rather pay a tax on net income than on gross receipts. And it would be better for our state economy, because the B&O tax can drive startups and marginal businesses under.
@53 My commuting consists of hopping from bed to computer and sitting on my fat rabbit ass watching stocks. And that’s only on the days I bother to get out of bed. The only CO2 I generate is
from Mrs. Rabbit’s heavy breathing.
did we also not have a far smaller percentage of our population taking money out of the system back then?
You tell them Serial Conservative, you are so right! Every chance you get, muddy the waters and bring up all those unemployed people who’s jobs were outsource or those lazy people working part time at wall-mart. You don’t want those liberal bringing up that the tax rate was 91% on the highest earners during the Eisenhower admin. We have to make sure the wealth creator get every tax break they are owed. You just keep bring up those people that cannot get jobs or are underemployed after 30 years of Reaganomics. However don’t mention how much these poor-by-choice slackers pay in sales taxes and state taxes. It’s just not right to take the money earned by the job creators from closing businesses and by off-shoring and derivative instruments and spending their money on public infrastructure. If the public was infrastructure, let them find the money and pay for it themselves. After all, the job creators didn’t use any public infrastructure to make their wealth, so why should they have their wealth stolen from them to pay for it.
Serial Conservative, you keep on distracting the liberals with repetition of the same arguments, cause you are showing them just how right you are.
Enough Already
“A Maine man was arrested when he told authorities he was on his way to shoot a former employer ….
“Timothy Courtois of Biddeford had been stopped for speeding, and a police search of his car found an AK-47 assault weapon, four handguns, ammunition and news clippings about the mass shooting … in Aurora, Colo. …
“Police searched Courtois’ home later Sunday and said they found a machine gun, several other guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
“We don’t know what his true intentions were,” said Steve McCausland, spokesman for the Department of Public Safety. “Based on the arsenal that was confiscated, we brought in our counterparts from the FBI and ATF to assist with the investigation.”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/48306831
Roger Rabbit Commentary: It isn’t that hard to figure out which people shouldn’t have guns. Just take them away from those people.
Serial Conservative, you strike me as some who knows just how good the bottom percentage have it. A family of 4 with a parent working at minimum wage here in WA makes a whopping $361 a week before taxes but they don’t have to pay federal taxes and they get to take advantage of all those free programs like welfare and food stamps and drug testing and all the free housing they are just giving away. They get to shop at food banks and get free food and get all the free health care at harborview. What a fun life they have. I can see why you rail against them and approve of every Republican attempt to cut their benefits every chance you get.
DEEP Thought:
How can a rich white Mormon guy win the presidency when every week it is one major campaign f*ck up after another?
You Get What You Pay For Dep’t — Part 1
A study concluded airport control towers operated by private contractors report far fewer runway incursions than FAA towers because they don’t report them.
http://www.businessweek.com/ar.....-the-cheap
Job loss at 55 is bad news
Wow, who would have thunk it. There is no room for compassion and doing the right thing, when the bottom line is all the matters. Profits trump all. What would a conservative suggest to fix this problem? Lower taxes on the richest, get rid of corporate regulations, ban abortion and contraception and deregulate guns. That would solve the problem of companies being afraid to hire older americans because of health care costs.
You Don’t Get What You Pay For Dep’t — Part 2
Residents at the nation’s largest for-profit rehabilitation center for brain-injured patients are systematically neglected and abused residents, according to complaints against the firm by family members.
http://www.businessweek.com/ne.....=bloomberg
The economy is getting worse, and stock investors have reacted. Apple fell 5% today, Whirlpool 4.6%, and UPS 3.6%. DeVry, the for-profit higher ed company, plunged 26% after announcing job cuts because of declining enrollment.
but obama said its getting better!
ummm, no. If I gotta tow something, I use the F-350…
LMFAO…..
wow, what great life….ugh. I would shoot myself if thats all my life came down to.
why are a couple making minimum wage pumping out children?
Several weeks ago Scott Walker owned Wisconsin Dems. The HA Yabbuts, led by RR, if I recall correctly, pointed out their victory in the state senate. That would be the state senate that won’t meet again before the election, and that will probably revert back to GOP control after the election due to census-related redistricting.
Anyway:
Now it looks like the GOP won’t even have to wait that long for the Dems to lose state senate control. They pissed off one of their own to the point that he’s going independent:
http://host.madison.com/wsj/ne.....f887a.html
Maybe they convince him to change his mind. Maybe not.
Wisconsin. It’s the gift to the GOP that just keeps giving and giving and ….
Where are Raw-Money’s fucking tax returns?
Wisconsin Democrats: owned.
http://www.politicususa.com/re.....eator.html
Where are the JOBS, assholes????
why are a couple making minimum wage pumping out children?
I donno, maybe they used to work for Dade International that Romney shut down, but because they are 55, no company will risk them at a paying job, so the wife has a job at wall-mart.
Wow. even the AP is saying that romney is taking the president’s words out of context. That’s he’s lying.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/s.....LDING_THAT
So as conservative troll said, “anything is acceptable if it helps us win.”
@83–
One AP hack reports this and it must be true??
Surely you jest.
The voters will decide what obama meant by looking at his own words outta his own mouth to the cheering jobless welfare crowd.
Romney is right. The context, including the crowd obama was pandering to, is even worse!!~
EV dismisses an AP quote as “one hack reporting that”. Then he quotes The Daily Caller, a notorioius righ-wing propoganda sheet, as authority on all sorts of issues.
Typical EV hypocracy.
Heck, even Romney conceeded yesterday that business owners profited by roads, banking, a legal system, and even good teachers in building their businesses. But after making such concessions, he still went on to claim to a friendly audience that “aside from that”, they built their businesses.
He forgot to mention the workers, delivery people, and many others.
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo......hp?ref=fpa
Let’s go after the shit Raw-Money says…and there’ll be lots more racist dog-whistle hate mogering code from those vicious assholes.
http://thinkprogress.org/secur.....itch-hunt/
Now THIS HERE is our boy ev’s kinda guy. The thinking man’s clownservative!
Louie Gohmert cannot possibly be a real human being, a situation that calls for urgent investigation.
The AP is a hell of a lot more respectable than you are.