Well…this is just a short one to comment on some of the statements from the right coming out of this debt ceiling debate…one of the common refrains is that Obama needs to lead on the issue and is not doing enough to solve the crisis. But, the only place they want him to lead is in their direction, to give them all of the tax cuts, spending cuts, and gutting of the social safety nets they want and they consider anything else a dereliction of duty. I just can’t believe this nonsense…
Told you it was going to be a short one…oh, and I got to sixty for the month…yay…but, I really need to get 62 since July has 31 days….damn…
Well…this is going to be a short one since I have been a little distracted by the Washington Post project…but I had to comment on the absurdity of the photo op and comments of Mitt Romney yesterday at a manufacturing plant in Ohio….where ole Mitt and the owner of the factory essentially said the infamous line from the title describing how bad Obama and his policies are for business. Let’s forget for now that corporate profits are at their highest level in history….I hope they can explain to me how business is doing that in an environment where they are opressed by government regulation. What old Mitt and the business owner did not disclose was that they have been the beneficiaries of government action in the form of tax abatements and subsidized government contracts that are policies of the Obama administration….”keep your damn government hands off my Medicare”….what a bunch of hypocrites….
Well…in some of the reporting today, it appears that one of the greatest sticking points in this whole debt debate for the righties is they won’t agree to anything unless there is a constitutional amendment to balance the budget included in any deal…even though this “cut, cap, and balance” plan passed the house, both the senate and Obama have said that this legislation is dead on arrival in either the senate or the president’s desk. Even if this absurd amendment to the constitution were to pass both houses with the required 2/3 majority, it still has to go to the states for ratification; a process that will take years and that has about as much chance to pass as a return to prohibition. So, these idiots want to put the entire US economy on hold while they live their delusions that they never have to compromise and should get everything they want even though the majority of America does not agree with them? Even John McCain has called out these morons on the delusional state of their thinking….but that is what you get America when you believe anything the right tells you…..and I agree with McCain when he says the tea party folks are lying to the country when they say that their agenda is even possible….I’m not sure if the lie is deliberate or if they are just so ignorant of how the founders wanted the government to work that they think a minority in one house can set the entire agenda for the country…doesn’t work that way…
Well…I don’t know what happened to my brain over the last couple of days but I have been able to work up some outrage and this one is just a jaw dropping example of the world as the repubs see it….over the last year, 25 individual hedge fund managers made over 26 billion dollars in income…yep, that’s right folks, these thieves took an aver age of a billion dollars home each…with the top guy making 4.9 billion dollars…and since they bought themselves a law from the repubs back when ole GW was running the whole show, they only pay 15% tax on that money; never mind that the secretaries that work at these funds and the janitors that clean up after them pay 25% of their pay in taxes. This is the repubs idea of fairness? How many jobs did this 26 billion create? Not one…yep, not one….
Where are the jobs, Boehner? Where are the jobs, Cantor? Where are the jobs, Snyder?
I do also want to take on the myth that the the low tax policies of gov Perry of Texas are the cause for job growth there…I have to laugh at that nonsense since almost all of the jobs are a result of the runup of oil prices and profits, so the rest of us are paying taxes in the form of higher prices that are subsidizing job growth in Texas…what are the repubs going to claim next as a result of their anti American agenda? That the oil in the ground in Texas is there because the repubs gave the rich more tax cuts? I think their crazy is starting to rot this country…geez….
Well….with all of this nonsense about the right wingers holding the country hostage or, being allowed to hold the country hostage, I have had enough…what I want Obama to do now is take everything off the table; to stop compromising with the repub thugs and say you get nothing….the only thing we should give them is a sharp kick in the ass and tell them we are tired of their childish nonsense and they will not be rewarded for being children….and then just let the country go into the tank…maybe we need this kind of wrenching trouble to eradicate the tea partiers from this country…..Grover Norquist doesn’t own this country and he needs to be told that…that legislators pledge to uphold the constitution not some no tax pledge that he has bludgeoned the repubs into signing and upholding….geez….
Well…I did go out to the beach and got a little sun…but that’s not what this is about…doing that a lot lately…I just have to comment on the rush to judgment by the right wing tv and newspapers who were all sure that the tragedy in Norway was caused by muslim extremists and went out of their way to trumpet the fact…even when they were completely wrong. Then we had Glenn Beck on his radio show comparing the youth camp where the murders happened to a Hitler youth camp…just because it was a Labor party party sponsored event. When are we all going to reject these folks and their hatred? I’ve had enough of the sloppy reporting and the assumptions being sold as the facts….when are we going to start holding the right responsible for this nonsense? Geez….
Well…the debt ceiling nonsense that is going on in Washington is sucking the life right out of me….when I hear that the dems are giving up everything…..cut to SS, Medicare, and every other program that helps the retired or middle class to the repub thugs and they are not getting anything in return, I despair for the future of this country. If it wasn’t for all of the things the repubs did…the two wars that were not paid for, the tax cuts for the wealthy, and deregulation, we would not be where we are and there would be no need to further gut the middle class to pay for this stuff. And, they are so against tax increases for the rich and connected but I guess that doesn’t count for you and me…retirees are going to get a huge tax increase by having the cost of Medicare go up and by cutting off the cost of living increases for SS. Why is it that the repubs always attack the little guys? I think it’s just typical bully behavior to pick on people that can’t fight back….I hope we can remind the voters who it was that gave the country away to the ideologues…and who drove the economy back into the ditch by cutting spending when the recovery is still so weak. Geez…
Well…I was going to lie out in the sun for a while but it was just too hot to do it comfortably so I took a pass….looks like I’ll have to live with the weird looking tan for another day….I did want to get to the Michigan tax thing….I saw an analysis the other day that really describes what the “shared sacrifice” that our gov and the rest of the repubs here are trying to sell. Under the new plan, and with the deletion of the homestead tax credit for the middle class…a retiree making around 50K a year in retirement benefits will pay more than 3,000 dollars a year more in taxes…taking almost 8% additional from that meager amount. But, people making over 250K per year that are still working will pay less than that in their tax increase. Now, does that sound fair to anyone? Does that sound like shared sacrifice. Nope, it didn’t to me either….I have only one more comment….where are the jobs from the 2 billion dollars you just gave away to business? There are none….but ceo pay just went up again and I am pissed about having to pay for a raise for someone making millions a year….
Well…with all of the talk of economic apocalypse that will come from the failure to raise the debt ceiling, what do we see from the house repubs? We see them spending a whole legislative day on a symbolic bill called “cut, cap, and balance” that everyone in the country knows will never pass the senate or be signed into law. What we have is a bunch of right wing thugs playing chicken with the economy to make a point for the 20% of the country that say they are tea party aligned while the rest of us sit here and wait for our retirement money to be worth nothing when the stock market crashes, which it will if these idiots keep this nonsense up. I really hope they keep this crap up…then we will take back the house, keep the senate, and Obama will get 4 more years…..and I would pile on our own gov Snyder…in fact, I think I will….where are the jobs governor? Where are the jobs Eric Cantor? It just shows again how the repubs just care about ideology, not about you and me….I do have more about the tax shift here in Michigan but that one is for later….I need to lie our in the sun and try to even out the tan….
Well….before I get to the political stuff…I do have to relay one bit of trail weirdness…well…maybe not weirdness but coolness let’s say….there must have been a huge hatch of those little blue butterflies yesterday….there were hundreds of them on the trail and when I went through the swarms they looked just like blue snowflakes blowing in the wind…just the coolest thing…
Okay, now on to the stupidity….there is so much crying on the repub side about deficits that they want try to pass a constitutional amendment to limit the governments ability to respond to slowdowns by codifying the percentage of government spending to an average of the last thirty years….basically saying that they can see the future and know what is going to happen 10, 20, 30 years down the road. They didn’t even see the crash coming in 2008….how can they now believe they are prescient? Just another bunch of stupidity by the party of the know-nothings who are proud of their ignorance and who willfully confuse ideology with good policy and who choose ideology over the needs of the citizens of this country…geez….