Sensible Erection | Where has "This Guy" been?

Wednesday, 8 September 2010

quote [ Obama details opposition to extending tax cuts for the wealthy ]

If The president and the Dems had been talking like this I don't think there would be any questions come November. This is strictly politics and message, something the Dems have been sorely lacking.

The question now is this to little to late or is it perfectly timed. Like I said above there was no new policy announced, just a repackage of the message. Even the tax cuts won't take effect until Jan. and all the other things proposed don't have a snowballs chance in hell getting passed a republican filibuster.

My hope is that the GOP does filibuster this and the Dems call for an Imitate reconciliation vote. that does two things, it shows they have some balls and puts the GOP on the wrong side of the people and secondly it lets them showcase all the other bills (50) caught up in the senate, being blocked by the Republicans.

laying out a vision for the future, taking credit for what they have accomplished, and showing how you would be worse off with the GOP is good politics. Like I said here http://www.sensibleerection.com/entry.php/81595

To me this is another test of the Obama administration and the Dems. in congress ability to counter the GOP propaganda machine. If they don't get somebody out there with a message besides Robert Gibbs they are going to get their collective asses handed to them.

Today was the 1st time since the campaign I saw the political leader of the Democratic party, not the president of all the people, it felt good to see him back.

"Obama: GOP trying to ride 'fear and anger' to Election Day "

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2010/09/obama-gop-trying-to-ride-fear-and-anger-to-election-day/1

"Obama Lays Out Economic Proposals and Assails G.O.P."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/us/politics/09obama.html?_r=2

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama, fighting to keep Democrats in charge of Congress, said on Wednesday the United States could not afford to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the rich and accused Republicans of being fiscally irresponsible.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67O4WF20100908

[politics] [by bbqkink@11:20pmGMT] [+5 Good]

Comments

symmetrian said @ 11:27pm GMT on 8th Sep
"Sourly"? Did you mean "sorely"?

symmetrian said @ 11:29pm GMT on 8th Sep
Oh, nevermind. There are lots of these. I like "snowballs chance in heel" as well.

bbqkink said @ 11:32pm GMT on 8th Sep
Thank you, I need all the help I can get.

badgerbaiter said @ 11:33pm GMT on 8th Sep [Score:1 Hot Pr0n]

sacrelicious said @ 11:35pm GMT on 8th Sep
"check out my weights"

don't mind if I do...

theolypse said @ 11:38pm GMT on 8th Sep [Score:3 Insightful]
Man. Not even the incredible chest can distract me from how much I want to beat the with a hammer every time words come out of it.

Today, I am less a man.

theolypse said @ 11:38pm GMT on 8th Sep
face. The face.

gunthar said @ 11:44pm GMT on 8th Sep [Score:2 Underrated]
mute works imo

theolypse said @ 11:49pm GMT on 8th Sep
The gestures also hurt me. I hate hate hate hate hate those girls. I've known so many. God, I

whereismyhammer?

crom said @ 1:50am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Good]
Mine is in my pants.

Todomanna said @ 1:53am GMT on 9th Sep
Your pockets must be huge.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 6:55am GMT on 10th Sep
(The hammer is his penis.)

Nihil said @ 12:11am GMT on 9th Sep
Good to know I'm not the only one.

azazel said @ 5:06pm GMT on 9th Sep
This.

Nihil said @ 12:12am GMT on 9th Sep
I'm pretty sure I died around 0:58.

MmmFiber said @ 4:28am GMT on 9th Sep
I watched it with the sound off. Wtf is up with the japanese?

Supreme_Coconut said @ 5:20am GMT on 9th Sep
I'd love to upload a video response of how I undosuru but I think posting a video of myself furiously masturbating to her awe-inspiring sweater midgets would be against Youtube's terms and conditions.

JOECAM said @ 11:42pm GMT on 8th Sep [Score:4 Funny]

	bbqkink said @ 4:54am GMT on 9th Sep width="416" height="374" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" id="ep">
	-_- said @ 12:05am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Informative] From here

verycleanteeth said @ 12:14am GMT on 9th Sep
Not sure I see the point being made with this graph?

Tirade said @ 12:17am GMT on 9th Sep
The point is that they're not middle class tax cuts. They're upper class tax cuts.

bbqkink said @ 12:23am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:2]
This shows the difference a little better, yea the rich benefit more they have more, this repeal of the Bush tax cut only takes the upper brackets back to the rate of Clinton but doesn't even come close to the time of Regan or Nixon.

MmmFiber said @ 4:02am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Insightful]
I always thought that was the case, but never had a neat graph to support it.

All those greedy poor people. What do they spend the money on? They don't even have anything. No yachts to take care of. No mistresses to payoff. No throngs of illegitimate children to secretly send to college. No lawyers to pay to defend you against all those interns and their sexual harassment lawsuits. I bet those fucking interns were poor too. Everybody wants my money! ~Rich Guy

DirtyBirdy said @ 3:06am GMT on 10th Sep
not to mention that the rich people obviously like money, as they have gotten lots of it, while the poor people must not like it or they'd have more.

verycleanteeth said @ 12:35am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Underrated]
I Assume by "tax benefit" they mean "tax relief".

If so, then of course you'll get more benefit from tax cuts if you make more money! People in lower income brackets already pay so little in taxes there's not much there to cut in the first place.

The fact that somebody making over $1 million gets about the same amount of tax relief as someone making $200,000 would indicate these are actually pretty progressive tax cuts.

Nihil said @ 12:43am GMT on 9th Sep
This graph NEEDS to be by percentage.

You wouldn't compare Bill Gates' yearly tax payments to a hobo's and conclude that the hobo is being treated better by the IRS because he pays less. Likewise, if Bill Gates gets bigger tax cuts it doesn't necessarily prove that he's being treated better.

VictorTyne said @ 1:27am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Insightful]
The idea of comparing tax cuts by percentage is a common fallacy used by the wealthy to hide the fact that even though they pay more in taxes for each dollar of income, the total income is so far beyond what a person needs or could possibly use that just to have so much money at the expense of everyone else is in itself fundamentally evil. Especially given the fact that the people at that level almost never do anything to earn it.

This is a world with finite resources; each bit you take for yourself is taken away from someone else.

Think of it this way: your parents bake you and your brother a giant cherry pie. They ask you to save 30% of each of your pieces so they can have some pie too.

Your brother gobbles down the whole pie just to vomit it back up, leaving you a single cherry, and then he whines that you should be grateful because he had to give up 30% of a giant pie and you only have to give up 30% of a measly little cherry.

You don't sit back and say "Wow, he's totally right. It must suck for him to have to give up so much more than I did." You stomp on his fucking nuts.

I really am waiting for the homeless populations to start targeted killings of the obscenely rich upper class. Let's see those free market conservatives whine about the power of the invisible hand as it rams its fist up their collective ass.

verycleanteeth said @ 2:33am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Underrated]
Hogwash. What other meaningful measure do you have for comparing tax cuts if not by percentage? Unless you're looking at a system with a legal earning cap, or a completely flat tax, you have to consider percentages.

verycleanteeth said @ 2:39am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Underrated]
Also, this story completely misses the point. Assuming these are the analogies you're going for:

Get who only gets cherry = poor schlub
Brother who gorges on cake = rich bastard
Mom = The Gub'ment

If your brother took 70% of the whole cake and you only got 70% of the cherry, your beef is with your brother, not your mom.

verycleanteeth said @ 2:40am GMT on 9th Sep
*kid* who gets cherry

arctan said @ 2:05pm GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Informative]
If my mom is the only person powerful enough to stand up to my brother and stop him doing his shit, and she doesn't, then it is also her fault.

gdoube said @ 8:35am GMT on 10th Sep
I guess to complete the analogy, your brother has pretty much got your mom in his pocket, presumably by giving her big chunks of vomited-up cherry pie.

Awesome image, thanks.

Didel said @ 12:47am GMT on 9th Sep
We've seen this graph (at least the data for it) before a few weeks ago. Me and someone else discussed why it's such a shit poor graph then, unfortunately I'm too lazy to find that discussion right now. But the graph hasn't approved with age.

While I almost never agree with bbqkink, his graph is much better representation.

bbqkink said @ 1:31am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Underrated]
While we are not subject of almost never agreeing with someone maryyugo had a good point in the previous post. Nobody is willing to address the core problems in the tax code.

"You guys never get it. The rich don't pay tax not because of tax rates but because of loopholes, incentives, overseas transactions, lying, cheating, evading, and of course, the largest boondoggle of all, letting the company pay for everything and then having them take it off the corporate tax. And taxes increase automatically because the cost of living keeps rising, incomes rise, and brackets change without rates changing.

The few fuckers that get nailed by rapidly increasing tax rates are those who really earn the money and willingly pay the tax they owe. Is that really who you want to punish?

As for the poor, you can't slash taxes on the really poor because they don't pay any anyway and if they do, they're already small.

And federal taxes are only about half the real tax burden for the middle class. As I've said before, there are state income taxes in some states as high as 10%, there are state and local sales taxes (similar to VAT for our non-US friends) and those now go as high as 11% in some places. Then there are "fees", licenses, inspections, disposal, luxury, excise, gas guzzler, property tax (even on vacation property and boats which some prefer to call yachts) and on and on and that's before you get to state disability tax on earnings, social security and medicare tax, and I'm sure I left out some others. It's taxing from the moment you awake to the moment you die. It's enough already. Don't raise it. And if you do, you're politically dead.

Make rich people pay their fair share by insisting on existing rates and laws and eliminating expense accounts and other evasion? Sure, that'd be good. Lots of luck with it. Let me know how you do. "

rndmnmbr said @ 2:02am GMT on 9th Sep
Money is a measure of power, and the powerful have always dictated to the weak. Expecting a change for the better is a sad road to disappointment.

bbqkink said @ 12:35am GMT on 9th Sep

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Bodnoirbabe said @ 12:56am GMT on 9th Sep
I like Rachel Maddow because she really explains the hypocrisy of the Republics so succinctly. However, I usually come out of it with a headache. You know....from all the banging my head against my desk.

profetscott said @ 12:48am GMT on 9th Sep
spelling errors, and stuff aside, verry well put together post.

bbqkink said @ 12:54am GMT on 9th Sep
Here is the speach

bbqkink said @ 12:56am GMT on 9th Sep
sorry not complete speach

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-09-09-obama09_ST_N.htm?csp=34news

bbqkink said @ 1:03am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Good]
UPDATE: Video and transcript are below.

http://www.shallownation.com/2010/09/08/obama-cleveland-speech-video-sept-8-2010-address-at-cuyahoga-community-college-in-ohio/

Transfer said @ 1:01am GMT on 9th Sep

I liked this video right up until the caption at the end. Felt a little redundant.

King of the Hill said @ 2:52am GMT on 9th Sep
So Obama gets cheered on by you only when he is out giving what is essentially a campaign speech bashing the opposition?

Please cheer him on when he decides to be productive or actually does anything real with POLICY to spur job growth.

sanepride said @ 2:59am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:2 Underrated]
Well the $50 billion infrastructure stimulus proposal would qualify as something real with policy. Problem is the GOP have put up a solid wall of opposition to pretty much anything Obama proposes that isn't tax cuts, despite the fact that this represents needed investment. Considering the non-stop bashing the president has endured from the opposition in every attempt he's made to enact real policy, I think some aggressive campaign-style pushback is not only appropriate, but overdue.

tiemy said @ 3:13am GMT on 9th Sep
He's doing quite a bit with policy, actually, most of it coming from what was once considered exclusively right-wing/Republican economic gospel.

The tax cuts, austerity and complete indifference to unemployment and social problems won't create jobs or revitalize the long term prospects for American capitalism of course -- that's not the intent, despite what the two parties say -- but they will help further the fantastic wealth and profits of Wall Street, corporate America and the class that runs both.

tiemy said @ 2:55am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Interesting]
This is a fine example of the ridiculous fucking farce that is official American politics. On one side of this media-sanctioned "debate," we have an avowed free marketeer, whose response to mass unemployment and widespread destitution is fiscal austerity and hundreds of billions in tax breaks for big business.

On the other, we have avowed free marketeers, pushing fundamentally identical policies on a larger scale but without even the threadbare pretense of in any way representing the public interest. So instead, a small dose of reality:

Obama on Labor Day: No measures to address jobs crisis

In a speech delivered to mark Labor Day in the US, President Obama made clear that there will be no significant government measures to address the most severe jobs crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Speaking in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Monday, Obama trumpeted a plan for investment in infrastructure and transportation as a significant jobs program. Despite efforts by the media to play up the announcement, it quickly emerged that the administration is simply asking Congress to reauthorize a bill that is routinely passed every five years. His proposal for spending is little changed from previous years.

According to a White House fact sheet, the administration is proposing that Congress “front load” the Department of Transportation spending bill by about $50 billion, saying that this would create jobs as early as 2011. The administration did not propose a total figure for the bill, which will likely not be debated until after the mid-term elections in November. In 2005, the Bush administration signed a transportation bill that cost $286.4 billion over five years, or just under $50 billion a year. The money goes to states and localities to fund road and infrastructure projects and regular upkeep.

The figure proposed by Obama is not only grossly inadequate in comparison to the decayed state of American infrastructure, it will not begin to address the jobs crisis. It even pales in comparison to the administration’s own inadequate $862 billion dollar “stimulus” bill last year, which consisted largely of tax cuts and handouts to private companies.

Administration officials have repeatedly stressed that there is no new major stimulus bill in the works, let alone a program of direct government hiring. Obama is expected to announce a number of additional “jobs” measures later this week, including the extension of tax cuts for corporations and small businesses.

The administration has also pledged that all these measures will be “fully paid for,” continuing on the theme of budget cutting and fiscal austerity. While hinting at ending various tax loopholes for energy companies, payment will also likely include cuts in social programs—like those carried out with the last extension of unemployment benefits, which was accompanied by a reduction in funding for Food Stamps.

Obama’s rejection of any serious jobs program is part of a conscious class-war policy. Two years after the financial crisis and the multi-trillion-dollar bailout of the banks, the administration is spearheading a campaign by corporations to sharply increase the exploitation of the working class, using the “new normal” of mass unemployment to force workers to accept lower wages, longer hours, and more brutal working conditions.

The latest jobs report—showing a loss of 54,000 jobs in August—underscores the bleak outlook. The official unemployment rate, which vastly underestimates the real number of jobless workers, is expected to remain at around 10 percent at least through 2011. Of the 15 million who are officially unemployed, 42 percent have been out of work for more than six months, while millions are running out of their meager unemployment benefits.

To the extent that the administration has a jobs policy, it is the revival of a section of US manufacturing on the basis of closing the wage gap between US workers and their brutally exploited counterparts in Asia. Already, the level of exploitation of American workers has increased significantly. While labor costs for companies are falling at the sharpest rate in decades, productivity has surged—that is, workers are being forced to do far more for much less.

Sergio Marchionne, the head of the Italian auto company Fiat, summed up the thinking of the corporate elite in remarks recounted in a soon-to-be-released memoir by Steven Rattner, the Wall Street investor turned head of Obama’s Auto Task Force. According to Rattner, Marchionne told then-United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger that workers needed to accept a “culture of poverty” rather than a “culture of entitlement.” Fiat was negotiating a partnership with Chrysler at the time, under the direction of the Obama administration, which was demanding that workers accept massive concessions and job cuts. continued

sanepride said @ 3:07am GMT on 9th Sep
So, not that it will happen anytime soon, but how do you and your commie pals feel about a 'New Deal' scale of gov't investment in direct job creation? You guys rank FDR as one of the good guys, at least as far as capitalist lackeys go?

sanepride said @ 3:02am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:2]
I thought this Krugman piece was kind of interesting:
1938 = 2010?

incpenners said @ 3:45am GMT on 9th Sep
Interesting? How about delusional.

I saw this linked from Taranto's column in the Wall Street Journal today. His comment was:

What Krugman calls "the miracle of the 1940s" is more commonly known as World War II, a ruinous conflict that cost some 60 million lives, including more than 400,000 American ones, and that entailed the near-extermination of Europe's Jewish population.

sanepride said @ 4:05am GMT on 9th Sep
Which of course, misses the point so stupidly as to be comical. Reading the entire column makes it pretty clear that the "miracle of the 1940's" Krugman refers to is not the war itself, but the epic economic boom that followed what was (adjusted for inflation) the most concentrated, massive spending spree in US history.
Maybe try reading the whole editorial instead of some uncomprehending hack's lazy dissection of it.

lilmookieesquire said @ 4:55am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Funny]
Ya, but there were many other factors as well.

Then again, I hate Krugmen so much if he said snow was white, I'd take the time to pee in it; photograph it; and email it to him- along with his portrait with a piece of shit photoshopped over his mustache and the word "douche" tattooed on his forehead.

(ps. If one of you is Krugman... I don't know... I think I'd still hate you... Tough all.

sanepride said @ 5:19am GMT on 9th Sep
Well he isn't necessarily saying that the massive spending on the war effort caused the prosperity that followed, only that it didn't mitigate it. His point is that in extraordinary circumstances (which one could argue we face today) history has shown that major deficit spending can have favorable consequences. Or at the very least, now is not the time to be stingy and dwell on the deficit.
I'm not sure why you would hate him so much, unless you're a libertarian or tea-party type. He's one of the few economists in the current situation who is making the case for government investment simply and forcefully. Personally I wish he were Secretary of the Treasury, or a key Obama adviser. But apparently he's not interested in such a job.

willrogers said @ 6:41am GMT on 9th Sep
That's kind of the point that many Keynesian economist make when looking at the New Deal and World War II.

What got us out of the Great Depression was major fiscal policy spending by the US government, which included the New Deal, arms we sold to other countries, and the production purchased by the US military for its own use during the war.

I don't think they or even Krugman think that WWII was a good thing, just that massive spending in an emergency is what helps us get out of that emergency.

So, even if WWII didn't happen we still should have spent a ton of money to get out of the Great Depression and, in fact, it would have been if that money were spent on constructive purposes like improving infrastructure (like Eisenhower did with the building of the interstate road system for military readiness purposes), investing in new technology and research, education spending, etc.

The problem with supply side economics is not that it is impossible for it to work, just that it doesn't generally work in practice because you can't really control what people do with the money you cut from taxes.

Obama had a great plan with Cash for clunkers that was kind of a supply side fix. He used a tax cut to generate economic output, which helped consumers and car companies without giving a big corporate handout like the bailouts.

tiemy said @ 5:51am GMT on 9th Sep
i think you're mixing up krugman with friedman

lilmookieesquire said @ 12:09pm GMT on 9th Sep
Nope. Krugman. Hate him. Ever since his ugly ass face appeared on newsweek. Even if he's right, I didn't approve of him fussing Obama near election and I think he's a huge attention whore and a megalomanic asshole.

sanepride said @ 2:35pm GMT on 9th Sep
Sounds personal. Whatever Krugman may have done to your mom, you should try to let it go.

lilmookieesquire said @ 3:49pm GMT on 10th Sep
He is NOT my DAD!

Barnabas_Truman said @ 7:48pm GMT on 10th Sep
Search your feelings. You know it to be true!

lilmookieesquire said @ 4:48am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Insightful]
Um... WW2 was actually pretty sweet for America. We sold a shitload of weapons, got dibs on geopolitical restructuring, and got a shit-ton of germany's scientists. And that's not counting the massive migration to the west coast and the economic competition setting itself back a good solid decade.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 7:22am GMT on 10th Sep
Don't forget the massive amounts of death and destruction.

lilmookieesquire said @ 3:49pm GMT on 10th Sep
Icing on the cake ;)

bbqkink said @ 4:57am GMT on 9th Sep
Here is the Fox take on this..they still amaze me,If you don't like the facts just make some up

Rift Over Tax Cuts Widens Among Democrats

Growing reservations
among Democrats about letting tax rates rise for wealthy Americans are making it more unlikely that Congress will decide what to do about the looming expiration of Bush-era tax cuts before November's election.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/08/democrats-divided-expiring-tax-cuts/