tvashtarkatena

The NYT has a great interactive tool where you can balance the budget yourself using all the proposals that have been put on the political table. I balanced the budget in about 10 minutes. Google it.

Obviously, if taxing the rich isn't enough, we need to do even more. Agreed. Massively cutting the military comes to mind. Hope you can keep your job if that happens. Of course, there is not reason whatsoever to leave the low-hanging-fruit of tax revenues from the hyperwealthy on the table. That would be kind of stupid. But, yes, we need to do much more. No one here, other than you and perhaps JayB (hard to figure out any of his, um, 'points') has claimed that taxing the rich would solve the problem completely. Unless you thought that's what we've been saying. Which would also be kind of stupid.

Bingo. If Obama had been using the fireworks from the speech last night to define the Administration's narrative from the get-go, the terms of the debate would look far different than they do now. A radical Ryan-plan would never pass the trial balloon stage. This is more of the same: allow the Right to frame the debate for a couple months, meet them "half-way", give an amazing speech, and then negotiate everything away. We should, as Greenwald does, be asking if this is by design. If it is, the liberal punditry that's eating out of Obama's hand today are getting played. Have to agree with that. While the Repubs always fail at governing they are crafty at politics. Something the Dems appear to be cluess about. You guys really need to check out the negotiated numbers sometime before you circle jerk each other like this.

So both you and JayB support taxing the rich, plus other measures. There's lots of common ground here if you look for it.

Our Museum of Flight failed to snag a space shuttle.

Interesting since it seems the rich have just as much trouble (if not more) "keeping their families together". that might be true, but that's generally more b/c they can afford 6k$/day coke habits? don't think the rich folks family problems revolve so much around keeping their kids in health insurance, w/ a roof over their heads, in a decent school, etc. etc. Would be interesting to compare the experiences of various poor immigrant groups with just as little money as the "native" poor and see how they score on all of the metrics of family dysfunction - divorce, delinquency, dependency, illegitimacy, etc. Willing to bet that household income would explain relatively little of the variance between groups that are equally poor. Interesting for a cyber voyeuristic sociopath with a bigotry issues, perhaps. For the rest of us, not so much.

You're not truly rich until you leave cocaine Berluti-prints when you leave the penthouse.

I should totally have my own Talk Radio show.

Hey, I hear we've even got an election coming up. Listen for that refreshing sound of reason and compromise.... ...except from Bachmann, et al, of course, but her party wrote her Stepford ass off a long, long time ago.

Contrary to some opinions here, the Tea Party has been crashed. The Dems knew that if they won (it was more of a slaughter) this round, they'd practically not even have to show up for the debt limit 'fight'. The Mandaterz can puff themselves up in the mirror all they want about the 'looming battle royale', but the old guard Rs...and most of the rest of us, I'd wager, already know that the only thing that's bleeding after this amateurish attempt to push a Trojan Horse, Plastic-Jebus-Meets-Bleed-the-Weak (oh, excuse, me, 'freeloaders') agenda is Ryan's asshole. This paves the way for more reasonable, compassionate budget reform: taxing the rich (duh) and, hopefully, real military spending cuts (ditto duh). But hey, thanks for all the street theatre. I only caught it after the fact, but it did bring me no small amount of joy.

I'd wager that a large number of all of us, if not all, would prefer if someone else foot the bill. Fortunately, the rich are a) in the minority and b) have the money to spare.

The well to do's I've talked to realize their taxes are low...too low - according to the older folks with a sense of history. Rich or poor; nobody voluntarily pays more taxes than owed, of course. These folks have told me they wouldn't have a problem paying Clinton era taxes.

You do remind me of Mr. Lahey, with the exception that he's actually taken seriously on occasion.

This would represent 16 to 20 % of all retail sales of electricity in the U.S., which, of course, is utter bullshit.

Hint: There is no victory to chant about. Ever. Just more bickering. Such is the way of the angry, hairless monkey.

Yeah, pretty much. That must explain why you failed to notice that Obama was regurgitating the deficit drivel and ignoring the creating jobs mandate. ...would that include his tax-da-rich plan? D'oh!

Yeah, pretty much. Doomsday predictions have a curious way of sorting themselves out.

Oprah's hiring analysts, guys. Go after that shit.

That's one way to pack your schedule, I guess. The tides, gravity, and weather can all be an annoyance at times as well. Best of luck.

Born in '59, so I grew up with the Cold War, but I've got to say I don't remember those Liberty Through Consumption grocery displays. In any case, all kinds of 'messages' are put out there all the time, as they always have been...most of which are happily ignored by folks like me. Try it sometime. Or not.

I find all the chest puffing about the upcoming national default laughable, considering that only 28 Rs voted to shut the government down - an infinitesimally tinier political risk that, when it came down to it, caused no small amount of shrinkage among that set. This is what happens when the loud and stupid confront reality, I guess. Still, its entertaining to see the rats on Fox bite each other after the Dems electrified their cage, then kicked it across the room. They negotiated and extra 5 whole Billion...out of the original 67 Billion differential proposed. 7% of the way there! Rather than keeping their eyes on the prize, they went after the ever popular but fiscally insignificant NPR and Planned Parenthood. Way to keep your focus, gang. Of course, pushing religiously driven, socially conservative repression IS the real tea bagger agenda, in as far as anyone can cobble together a cohesive agenda at all from that disgruntled clusterfuck of a (bowel?) movement. Yeah, there's gonna be quite a few one termers trying to figure out how they're gonna feed their 10 kids if they keep this 'hard hitting' performance up. If they weren't so stupid they'd cut the military, raise taxes on the wealthy, and drop the religious crap to gain widespread popular support...but they won't, cuz' they are. Stupid, naive, and, in the end, ineffective. Not a good combo when you've got such a psychopathic base. Pact with the Debbil and all that.... Mandate!!!!!!

We've been funding our low tax rate through a ballooning debt. The R's want to have their cake (no increase in debt limit) and eat it (no new taxes through the ever magical and often mythical mechanism of 'economic growth') too.

The attempted link between a grocery promotional display and any meaningful definition of freedom is telling, if just a wee bit of a stretch. Stop me before I brush again?

That's funny. I can never find the 1 foot wide toothpaste display in my grocery store because it seems there's always one or two hotties standing in the way. Guess this corporate slave shops at a different store than you free thinkers.