Obama’s unwillingness to cut capital gains tax rates is having disastrous results:
The number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits surged last week to a level not seen since October 1982, according to a government report released Thursday.
The number of initial jobless claims jumped to a much-higher-than-expected 626,000 in the week ended Jan, 31, according to the Labor Department. That’s up from a revised 591,000 in the previous week and the highest level since the last week of October 1982, when jobless claims reached 637,000.
Clearly, the cause is the Democratic unwillingness to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. What these people need is a serious cut to government programs and government waste so that the economy is stimulated.
/RedState
/Joetheplumber
/entireRepublicandelegation
In all seriousness, for those of you who think I am kidding:
The most sweeping of them, by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), failed on a mostly party-line vote of 61-36. It would have replaced the White House-backed legislation with a series of tax cuts on personal and business income and capital gains at the same time it made cuts passed during the Bush administration permanent.
Tax cuts are, to Republicans, secular creationism.
*** Update ***
I see you all were on this already in the comments. What I get for not reading them. Crazy people.
Joshua Norton
The sad part is that the Repugs were scared sheetless of Obama’s 75% approval rating. But when he reached out to them and made a big deal about "bipartisan" support it was perceived as an act of weakness. He emboldened them to act like the little tinpot dictators that they really are.
He’s going to have to break out the whip and the chair and get their scared little asses back into the cave so the mess can be cleaned up.
They’re like Churchill’s definition of the Germans during WWII. "They’re either at your feet or at your throat".
The Moar You Know
How much longer do we have to pretend to be bipartisan with people who obviously don’t give a shit about the common welfare of the nation?
(serious question)
I should also point out that they never tried anything like this even under Bush; as far as they’re concerned, all this is a big "fuck you" to the uppity Negro who has the temerity to sit in the White House and the libruls who put him there.
Catpain Haddock
Wouldn’t that amount to a large tax INCREASE on a whole lot of people?
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
Permanently keep the capital gains and dividends taxes at 15 percent; Lower top marginal income rates from 35 percent to 25 percent.
Good grief! 15% and 25% for cap gains and top marginal? How would the rich ever survive those crushing burdens?
The guy pushing this is clearly a socialist.
Stuck
Senator Graham stuck in a time loopety loop loop time warp from 2003, melts down on Fox. "The Process Stinks" with no input by wingnuts. This, despite all day long ddumb amendments by goopers on Senate Floor
Senator "Hucklebery" Graham Goes nuke
Memo to Graham, win a dern election if you want inclusion. Felt so good to say that.
Sorry bout the Hot Air link, couldn’t find it anywhere else.
The Moar You Know
@Catpain Haddock: Not to the "right kind" of people, i.e. the rich.
TenguPhule
Fixed.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
This is what puzzles me about the pissing and moaning about the $500K salary cap for TARP-baby CEOs – if they’re making less money, they’re paying less in taxes, and are therefore lucky duckies. Am I missing something?
demkat620
"As we enter week three of the failed Obama presidency…"
TenguPhule
Yes. The poor and middle class.
SATSQ.
Rommie
"Consequences, Schmosequences, as long as I’m rich."
And people say children learned nothing from cartoons…
Comrade Nikolita
For those who don’t under political speak, can someone explain this in english? Is John really mad at Obama?
Napoleon
@Catpain Haddock:
Yes, but I think it falls dispropotionately falls on blue states, since they have higher income.
PS – to clarify, part of what you can write off is local taxes, which are higher in blue states and on top of that those people make more
demkat620
@Comrade Nikolita:
No. Check the tags.
former capitalist
Right, let’s go ahead and repeal the AMT, keep capital gains @15%, and lower the corporate tax rate and see if we can create yet another housing/CRE bubble. Idiots.
Medicine Man
John is making fun of the Republicans by mocking them, Nikolita.
cmorenc
To even partially understand where conservative Republicans are coming from, you need to realize that they firmly believe they failed in the last two elections (especially 2008) NOT because their belief that it’s tax cuts and sharp deregulation of business and massive reduction of government has failed to work as believed, but INSTEAD BECAUSE they didn’t go nearly far and firm enough in insistently pushing them through. If only they successfully practiced and implemented TRUE conservative principles, and had NOT given in to any watered-down compromised principles to accomodate more progressive-minded people, would the wonderful soundness, truth, permanent prosperity, and happy liberty that would result have become so apparent to the American people that they truly would forever after gladly vote to institutionalize a permanent conservative, Republican majority.
Of course, their belief is just as much a total load of horseshit as regarding of Ayn Rand as the most brilliant economic, social, and political thinker of our time. But you have to unfortunately accept that many people (even many very high-level GOP office-holders e.g. ex-FED chief Alan Greenspan) truly and sincerely believe this shit to understand their insanity correctly, rather than blame it simply on cynical venality. Though many are infected with ample boatloads of venality and cynicism too.
headpan
Unfortunately, for the people of SC (fantastically dumb as they are) he DID win his own election. On top of that, we have DeMint and Mark Sanford as governor. That’s it. Not even a gawdamm Blue Dog. Weep for me.
Zifnab
At a certain point, just fuck’m. This is ridiculous. We saw the same shit DeMint proposed in amendments to House version of the bill and it was laughed out just as quickly. It’s like the just don’t understand which party is in the majority.
Now that the Republicans have finished jacking off on the Senate Floor, could we please put this damn thing up for a vote already?
pseudonymous in nc
Minty Jim’s Greenville Bible says that God created tax cuts before he got going on light.
Remember, good Southern Baptists put checks in the collection plate so that they can more easily itemize them for the IRS. My mother-in-law was shocked, shocked that working-class Catholics dumped in cash.
One more thing: is every fucking wingnut Senator proposing an amendment that says ‘Delete everything, replace with MOAR TAX CUTS’? In which case, it’s going to be a long night.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@Medicine Man: John is making fun of the Republicans by mocking them, Nikolita.
If you look back in the archives a few years, though…
demkat620
I have to stop watching cable tv. I am going to do myself a mischief cause the stupidity is out of hand and it is getting really hard to wait for this Obama slow play to happen. I know what he is doing, the repubs are blowing themselves up on this and it is just the epitome of how stupid they are but Lord, it is hard to wait for the payoff.
AkaDad
Teh internets. You has won them.
Joshua Norton
Don’t do that. You’ll only hopeless confuse yourself.
Stuck
@Comrade Nikolita:
My general rule is that assume everything Cole says as snark, or mocking, And then proceed slowly to the ultimate truth. Let your guard down and expect to get ricrolled, or suffer an Internet Tradition stealth attack.
lynn
Also, if you itemize deductions, you can include medical expenses. For many people without insurance, that can be a substantial amount.
demkat620
@Joshua Norton:
Our John is now all growed up…sniff. He was such a rebel. Talking that conservative hipster lingo. Smoking that tax cut crack pipe. Calling liberals silly and hippies.
And now, I’m just so proud.
JL
If you ask most small businesses, what would help them most, tax cuts or customers, I assume that all except BOB would say customers.
The repubs add some humor to the seriousness of our situation though. Just think, you have Sessions, the warrior Graham going against Boxer, showing his cat claws and Kay Bailey worrying about whether or not the chinese will still lend us money. (duh, not if we go off a cliff cause they are going right along with us)
Sessions was right about the Taliban comparison because the repubs are becoming pretty exclusive.
Zifnab
@lynn:
I had a woman come in with heart expenses she paid for out of pocket. The woman made, I think, less than $30k / year and spent $18k on medical bills. I was completely floored. Needless to say, she didn’t owe.
Montysano
I was getting my daily dose of wingnut radio on the drive home. The host was advocating paying bonuses to CEOs of bailed-out companies, using our tax dollars of course, because limiting the bonuses is socialism. So even though we have indeed socialized these companies, we should bonus the CEOs so that it seems less like socialism.
And of course…. tax cuts……. deregulation….. blah, blah.
I wish I was kidding.
Geri
I am being completely serious here – do the Republicans have anything at all to say that does not involve the words "tax cuts"? Any Republican I see on TV or read about in the news has nothing else to talk about (unless it’s about family values). I know they love the Laffer curve, but where do they think we are on it? Even on the Laffer curve there is a point where you have cut taxes enough that government revenue goes down, and we seem to be below that point already.
TenguPhule
Yes. Bomb Iran.
This has been another edition of Simple Answers to Simple Questions.
Mike in NC
Yet another meaningless data point as far as wealthy politicians with fantastic perks are concerned.
Ecks
I saw the words "White House-backed legislation" and automatically filled in "teh evil" for a fraction of a second till i remembered that the WH is the good guys these days.
Darn elections, messing up my mental furniture!
srv
John, I understand how you could go all anti-Bush after many years of insanity, but just want changed in you that makes you think DeMints tax proposals are all bad?
Do you reject all of your former values?
Mnemosyne
No. The Magical Tax Cut will solve all. They even thought it would stop the insurgency in Iraq if they cut the insurgents’ taxes.
I wish I was making that up.
Joshua Norton
No. Originally, the Republican Party started as a one-issue party in 1854, and that issue was anti-slavery. After the war that issue was gone and protecting the interests of minorities was no longer a popular concern to them. The northern robber barons took over the party to focus on economic issues and to protect their railroads and business interests.
So it morphed into the pro-business, anti-tax, anti-working class mess it is today. Working people voting Republican makes as much sense as the chickens voting for Colonel Sanders.
Bubblegum Tate
This is absolutely perfect.
andrea
He doesn’t stand a chance.
LItlebritdifrnt
"Permanently simplify itemized deductions to include only home mortgage interest and charitable contributions."
My DH is a teacher, a band director at that. He drives thousands of miles per year taking his kids to various things, from the entire band (when he is following in the car) to a couple of students (when he is driving them in his car), we spend an inordinate amount of money per year on supplies (pens, pencils, sheet music etc) he spends at least half the week some weeks in motel rooms cause he won’t get off until the basketball game is done at 11pm. He had to go to Raleigh recently for the Governor’s parade and of course stay in a motel room, if we can no longer deduct those expenses we are screwed. Limiting deductions to mortgage interest and charitable contributions and cutting out medical expenses and employee work expenses would be a huge mistake IMHO.
Montysano
Mother of jabbering Jeebus, I’m beginning to share our host’s despair. Lindsey Graham was just on Tweety’s show to respond to BO’s "8 years of failed policies" remarks. He blathered on about fiscal responsibilty, tax cuts, blah fucking blah, and completely dodged any comment about the last 8 years. As if history began on Nov. 4. And of course Tweety let him run free.
Not a Dem in sight to respond. No one. Goddamn it.
Monty
+1+2Montysano
@andrea:
Au contraire. It all depends on how the guy in the master control room of CNN/Fox/MSNBC decides to cut it. He can make Boxer look good, or look like a shrill DFH.
John C. is right: cable news now controls our political process.
headpan
For starters, she’s prettier, but don’t tell him that.
Rome Again
Well, he never addressed her question about whether he questioned any of Bush’s economic bills, and all I heard him say in reply was "I’ll go up against you any time".
Lame, even for "Linnzy"
Cain
@demkat620:
The best time was right after his conversion and his inevitable pariah status among so called conservatives. Rick Moran would come in here and shoot his mouth off and the sheer amount of snark thrown at him was just awesome. It was weeks and weeks of fun. The commentariat was at its best slinging mud at anyone who would show up to comment. It took all my will not to burst out laughing at work…
I miss those days. Everything was so new.. Darrell left soon after that.. although I was sort of a post-Darrell person.
cain
Cain
@Montysano:
Chuck Butcher
Compare and Contrast
Capt Sullenberger does his job exactly as described.
Congress does?
Duros62
Dear Republicans,
Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You.
I’m so sick of your shit.
Thanks.
jimmy stew
seconded……….fuck you neocons….I am so sick of your shit…
You want the greatest country in the world just as long as you dont have to pay for it…….oh did i mention fuck you :)