Read this article on how Bush tax cuts reduced Americans $2.7 trillion in income.
“Average incomes fell. Average taxpayer income was down $3,512, or 5.7 percent, in 2008 compared with 2000, President Bush’s own benchmark year for his promises of prosperity through tax cuts.
Had incomes stayed at 2000 levels, the average taxpayer would have earned almost $21,000 more over those eight years. That’s almost $50 per week.”
"The Republicans - they blocked the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. …I don’t know what their problem is with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Even if it’s repealed, there will still be a major American institution where gays are still forced to hide in shame and secrecy - the Republican Party."
— BILL MAHER, Real Time (via inothernews)
"New Rule: The next rich person who publicly complains about being vilified by the Obama administration must be publicly vilified by the Obama administration. It’s so hard for one person to tell another person what constitutes being “rich”, or what tax rate is “too much.” But I’ve done some math that indicates that, considering the hole this country is in, if you are earning more than a million dollars a year and are complaining about a 3.6% tax increase, then you are by definition a greedy asshole."
- Bill Maher
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All the Bush policies failed. The narrow group at the very top won. The rest of us, we all failed. The results were awful.
The two rounds of tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, including tax cuts in capital gains and dividends, slowed the economy so much that Americans made $1 trillion less income with the cuts then if income stayed at Clinton levels in 2000. [And you wonder why we had a housing bubble]
So why the debate? Johnston points out a mega-rich group determined to use Washington, through private meetings and contributions, called the POLITICAL DONOR CLASS. Remember that term. They are willing to distort the truth for personal gain, and pass the expense on to the rest of us.
They may be rich, but they're morally bankrupt.
"[W]hat really struck me as I went through it the first time was the foreign policy section, which is...how should I say this...amateurish and pathetic. What's the current Republican foreign policy? Stripping out the immigration stuff from that section of the document, what remains is (1) Gitmo; (2) Missile defense; and (3) threatening Iran. That's it. Iraq and Afghanistan are referred to once, in passing. There's nothing at all about what the United States should do in those nations. Nothing about Pakistan. Nothing about Russia, or China (China at least gets one mention, in the context of the deficit). Nothing about Europe. The rest of the world? Obviously not."Jonathan Bernstein
"Republicans keep running on platforms consisting of specified measures to increase the deficit and unspecified pledges to reduce it. Inevitably, they fail to reduce it. Then the party faithful decide the problem was leaders who lacked true conviction, and so the new leaders promise to mend their ways. Then they do the same thing all over again." - Jonathan Chait
Americans vastly underestimate the degree of wealth inequality in America, and we believe that the distribution should be far more equitable than it actually is, according to a new study.
Americans thought the richest 20 percent of our society controlled about 59 percent of the wealth, while the real number is closer to 84 percent."
So income redistribution is in full effect. We're setting up the rich to get richer. Not because they work harder, a field worker works hard, but because they have countless tax break and tax shelter options to keep more of their wealth.
A visual representation: if you took the yearly income of an average person in the United States, which is around $50,000, and stacked it in $100 bills, it would measure 1.6 inches off the ground.
Bill Gates' $50 billion is 31 miles high. That's over three times the height of Mount Everest. The stratosphere ends 30 miles above the Earth's surface.
Sickening how America targets those with so little.
Instead, Boehner said Congress will first have to initiate "an adult conversation" with voters.
Said Boehner: "It's time for us as Americans to have an adult conversation with each other about the serious challenges that face our country. I don't have all the solutions. But I believe that if we work with the American people, the American people will want to work with us to come to grips with these challenges that face our country. It's about having that adult conversation in an honest, open way that'll get us the answers to lay out the plan that will solve this problem once and for all."
An adult conversation? Are you kidding me? Like the one about health care reform?
The Republicans make a "pledge" and leave out the two biggest entitlement programs. Providing zero ideas was a nice touch, too.
Is this not obvious to everyone that they leave them out because they want them to go away?
America is a republican representative-democracy, not a referendum-based direct-democracy; I don't want leaders who will ask me what I think of every issue; I want leaders who will tell me what they think and then let me decide whether or not to vote for them.
The new CNN poll shows Chris Coons with a significant lead over Christine O'Donnell. 55-39. Ironically, if Mike Castle had been the Republican nominee, the numbers would be almost exactly reversed with Castle leading 55-37.
Further evidence of Palin's ridiculous political flailing utterly backfiring.
The Witchy Woman is afraid of doing press, even avoiding her old pal, Bill Maher. I can see the next 4-5 weeks having zero effect on her numbers improving.
"Basically Republicans are outraged and offended at the notion that the president has enough faith in the courage of the American people that another terrorist attack wouldn't reduce them to a quivering mass of frightened little children."Adam Serwer
Americans are brave and resilient. Not when a Democrat is in office and not when a Republican is in office. All the time.
Unlike nobhead Bush who said "bring it on", Obama was saying America can absorb an attack. He was not asking for one like Bush.
Delos B. McKown (via ageofreason)
The Kaiser Family Foundation has created what Kate Pickert calls "a surprisingly helpful" cartoon explaining the healthcare bill.
In 1997, Geoffrey Canada founded Harlem Children's Zone, a comprehensive system of programs and charter schools designed to help Harlem children succeed. Children enter the program as infants and graduate college-bound. In just over 10 years, Canada revolutionized a broken education system in a community where poverty and drop out rates ran high. The program's incredible success has made Canada one of the nation's leading advocates in education reform. Canada is profiled in Davis Guggenheim's education documentary, "Waiting For 'Superman.' "
Now, the federal government has announced Canada's program will be reproduced in 20 communities across America.
The New York Post reports,
President Obama has requested $200 million in his fiscal 2011 budget to help implement the 21 projects that are being planned this year, along with $10 million for additional planning grants.
"The winners announced today will deliver a broad array of services to help all young people thrive academically, earn their high-school diploma, go on to college, and reach for their dreams," he said
Real hero.
"The Bed Bug Registry is a free, public database of user-submitted bed bug reports from across the United States and Canada. Founded in 2006, the site has collected about 20,000 reports covering 12,000 locations."
PRINCETON, NJ -- Gallup's generic ballot for Congress for the week of Sept. 13-19 shows a 46% Democratic and 45% Republican split in registered voters' preferences for the midterm congressional elections. It is the second week out of the last three in which the two parties have been virtually tied.
Where's all that liberal media out there covering this?
Republicans run up massive debts, with interest, while at the same time cutting programs. You get less and pay more under Republicans.
How many schools and hospitals were built in America by the $3 trillion dollar Iraq War?
Say what you will, partisan rhetoric or not, health care reform is for Americans. The costs are in the billions and address a death spiral in health care insurance.
Say what you will about the stimulus, it is for Americans. Building infrastructure that Americans use. The paychecks by those employed are spent at US stores buying US products and services.
Look at the big blue box in the graphic above and think about how small your 401K got under Bush. How your house depreciated. How you work harder for less money. The entire middle class got screwed.
"Well, those [countries] that do [allow gays to serve openly], they're the ones that participate in parades, they don't fight wars to keep the nation and the world free,"- Tony Perkins, at the Value Voters Summit.
Tell that to Israel, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, and France, nearly all of whom fought alongside the US in Afghanistan and Iraq.
He’s right, I am sure that at least 90% of the tea baggers have no idea that their organization is not a grass roots movement that they helped form. If you show them every document, e-mail, check. etc. showing that it was created out of whole cloth by the minions of the Bros. Koch, they would say it is a lie. They are pawns by definition, because they are completely at the beck and call of another intelligence and are unable to be aware of it.
George E. Mills, Jr. on Tea party activists are ‘pawns’ to corporate interests, [Bill] Clinton says
Anyone who understands economics and what Fox News, the primary promoters of Tea Party Events, is about, this has been very obvious for over a year.
As a partisan figure with no office to seek, it’s obvious that Clinton is a pol doing what all surrogates do here: delivering the negative message.
(via diegueno)
(Source: facebook.com)
How to prove yet another classic teabagger argument invalid.
I spent grade 1-12 in Catholic school (ugh) and had to take religion. In grade 12, we were given this family tree derived from the bible’s story of Abraham and Sarah. (Whipped this image together in 5 seconds just now).
So the next time some ignorant bigot tries to deny the right to freedom of religion because America is “one nation under God”, you can tell them that the bible—the book that they say is the true, literal spoken word of the Holy Father himself—provides a direct bloodline that proves that you, sir and/or ma’am, worship the same God as your fellow “false idol worshiping ungodly terrorist (etc.)” Islamic Americans.
What? It’s a lie? Try actually reading that book you so often quote.
