Cain’s Economic Plan Is A Joke
It’s more of a slogan than plan…
Here is Sullivan’s favorite discussing what Andrew Sullivan himself has called a “joke”:
House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan says he “loves” presidential candidate Herman Cain’s signature “9-9-9″ tax plan.
Ryan told The Daily Caller in an exclusive interview that Cain’s plan is a good starting point for debate, and shows the GOP presidential campaign season has entered into a more advanced stage where ideas — not just personalities — have come to the forefront.
“We need more bold ideas like this because it is specific and credible,” Ryan said. “I’m more of a flat-tax kind of a guy.”
The budget chairman went on to say that ideas like Cain’s plan could help shape the debate over tax reform moving into 2013.
“It’s great to see such bold ideas,” Ryan told TheDC.
It’s bold! It’s credible! It’s specific!
It may be bold, as bold as Ryan’s radical, extreme plan to redistribute wealth upward, but it isn’t credible and is in no way specific. Hell, Cain himself doesn’t even know how the plan will work.
So, Andrew. The ball is in your court. Are you beginning to see what a fraud Paul Ryan is and that his plan was in no way serious?
General Stuck
Was wondering what Sullivan was up to. Been so long since we’ve had word of his exploits bouncing off one wall and then the other.
Jenny
Oh Christ, not more Sully, again.
r€nato
I have a bold idea: eat the rich.
Cat Lady
He’s on Vicodin. He should stay on it.
burnspbesq
The problem is that Andrew is just too emotionally tied to his self-identification as that nearly extinct species, the Enlightened Tory. You could sit down with Andrew and get him to tell you his position on a broad range of issues, and when you voiced the obvious conclusion (“Dude, you’re a Democrat”), you could hear his anguished cry of “Noooooooooooooooo” all the way from Provincetown to Santa Monica.
jeffreyw
Here is the same sort of test. Pretty much the same result from each for a failure.
schrodinger's cat
Dear Sully,
I just can’t quit you.
-BJ frontpagers (John and DougJ in particular)
eemom
@Jenny:
you can’t fight it. For some godawful reason Cole et al are mesmerized by the asshole.
And EVERY time there’s a new Sullivan post, the same old chorus of Cole wannabes chimes in with the SAME old passionate debate.
The Most Important Question Of Our Time: Is Sullivan worth reading, or not?
Ridiculous.
schrodinger's cat
@jeffreyw: How be the kittehs?
r€nato
yes, it’s a bold idea alright.
If you take ‘bold’ to mean, ‘we just might be able to slide this one by the voters if we dazzle them with enough bullshit.’
Every GOP proposal on taxation boils down to moving us further down the road to an America where everyone pays their own way in every possible respect.
(well except that the red states keep mooching off the blue states.)
The rich get nice, shiny schools while the poor get shitty schools which condemn them to a life of low-paying jobs. The rich get adequate health care while the rest of us live in perpetual fear of being wiped out by a single illness. The wealthy build up substantial retirement accounts while the rest of us get to gamble our formerly public pension funds on Wall Street and if we choose wrong, it’s Alpo casserole in our golden years or working as a Wal-Mart greeter til the day we die.
Is it any wonder that socialism and communism sprang up during the heyday of the unregulated, laissez-faire Industrial Revolution?
eemom
I DON’T FUCKING GIVE A SHIT ABOUT SULLIVAN AND ANYBODY WHO DOES IS OUT OF THEIR FUCKING MIND.
Just to clarify.
Villago Delenda Est
The sooner Randite twit Ryan’s head is displayed on a pike somewhere, the better.
Turgidson
Cole’s just angling for a Moore Award.
Ruckus
@eemom:
The Most Important Question Of Our Time: Is Sullivan worth reading, or not?
I realize the question is rhetorical, but…
No, Absolutely Not.
BGinCHI
Is our Sullivan learning?
eemom
@Ruckus:
You’re doing it again.
[bangs head on desk, weeping]
burnspbesq
When Reihan Salam and Matt Taibbi are more or less on the same page, you know there is something happening here, even if what it is isn’t exactly clear.
nationalreview.com/agenda/279951/moderate-matt-taibbi-reihan-salam
There are implementation issues with all of Taibbi’s proposals, but that doesn’t mean that they should be rejected out of hand. I do think that he’s missed an obviously better solution to his problem number five than what he has proposed. Turn back the clock and make investment banks general partnerships. When all of the partners’ entire net worth is on the line on every deal, you will see risk management like you’ve never seen before.
Roger Moore
The real test is whether John Cole can stop torturing himself by reading Andrew Sullivan. Just give it up, John.
amk
wow, sully has a man-crush on that punk-a$$ paul ryan ?
Satanicpanic
Green Balloons!
Ruckus
@eemom:
I like it when I get you to misunderstand me and bang your head on the desk.
I AGREE WITH YOU.
jeffreyw
@schrodinger’s cat: They fine, Bitsy is starting to fight back when Homer hits on her. He was taken aback.
eemom
@Ruckus:
understood; but don’t you see that if you take a substantive position on The Question — even if it’s just to prove a point — this will immediately unleash a Pandora’s box of amnesiac clowns who will feel compelled to regale us with every last detail of their very own Personal Relationship With Sullivan — just as though the exact same stupid argument hasn’t been had on this stupid blog eighty nine million gazillion infinity to the googleplex power stupid times before??
Brazilian Rascal
Poor John, setting himself up for another disappointment.
I know. I’m doing the very same thing.
Maybe if we -both- try to kick the ball, Cole, Lucy won’t pull it away this time! Yeah, that’s the ticket!
Kola Noscopy
…and Cole has a man crush on Sullivan.
ew
kmeyer the lurker
Apparently, Cain’s solution to imposing a grocery tax on everyone is to “buy used.” Seems to me there’s another word for used food ….
Mike in NC
Bold ideas! Flat tax! 999 Plan! Fuck the middle class!
AA+ Bonds
Well one thing I know for sure is that Herman Cain’s plan depends on Congress passing a 9% national sales tax to keep the entire country from collapsing, so HAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Seriously, I have never seen a “serious” Presidential contender advance an economic plan opposed by the vast majority of both parties in both houses of Congress and Lord have mercy it’s pretty fucking funny.
If I had to guess, Herman Cain probably cannot explain how a bill becomes a law.
AA+ Bonds
This thread is now the Herman Cain Sherm Smokin Appreciation Station
AA+ Bonds
Man, nothing says “economic recovery” like taxing the shit out of every purchase that everyone makes everywhere in the entire country, ALL ABOARD THE CAIN TRAINNNNNNN
VidaLoca
John,
Like a number of other people here tonight, I simply don’t understand the fascination you and Doug have with Sullivan. It’s as though one or the other of you, or both, are motivated several times a week to go checking out Sullivan’s ideological state. Every time, it’s “oh noes, we’re so through with Sullivan”. But you’re not. Every time, you come back “oh noes, Sullivan is still a Tory”. And he is. Still. Just like he was the last time you checked. A couple of days ago.
The chances are, Sullivan probably always will be a Tory. And it all doesn’t matter because he could remain a Tory forever, or drop out and become a Buddhist monk, or become a flaming Leninist and start frothing at the mouth about class warfare … it wouldn’t make a bit of difference. Sullivan’s not part of any kind of an interesting political or ideological process, and even if he were it wouldn’t matter.
However, I don’t think this is about Sullivan or his political trajectory — I think it’s about yours. When are you going to get over Sullivan and whatever it is he represents? I think you should inaugurate a “Sully Award” just like his “Moore Award”, and bestow it on prime examples of right-wing Tory dickishness and empty false equivalency in the blogosphere. That would be a sign of progress, made by someone whose opinions I actually find interesting.
AA+ Bonds
As the country’s top employment industry, Big Retail has to just LOVE Herman Cain’s plan to drive customers out of their stores with 15%+ sales taxes in a bunch of states.
I bet they just line up around the block to give him all the money he needs to win this thing.
P.S. the best way to not talk about Andrew Sullivan is to talk to everyone you know about Herman Cain and his wicked awesome tax-the-economy-to-death plan
Ruckus
@eemom:
LOL. Yes, Yes I do.
But sometimes a guy just has to have fun.
Ruckus
@AA+ Bonds:
Yes I’d like a 15% sales tax in my store.
The fun I’d have trying to explain why the moron they voted for wanted to tax their asses back to the stone age.
ETA /snark, just in case it wasn’t clear.
AA+ Bonds
@Ruckus:
I think a lot of Republicans are seriously racist enough to believe that when people call Herman Cain an idiot who farmed out his economic plan to Paris Hilton’s investor instead of a real economist, they can just be like “NUH UH, BECAUSE LIBERALS THINK BLACK PEOPLE ARE SMART AND STUFF” and win the election that way
Mark S.
I don’t get it. Cain’s plan isn’t any stupider than Ryan’s, but Sully loved one but hates the other.
SoINeedAName48
GIVE
IT
A
REST!
Cacti
Anything that aims to screw the working class gives Paul Ryan a boner the size of a rail spike.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Mark S.: Ryan’s cute (to Sullivan, not to me) and Cain isn’t. It’s really that simple. To continue the discussion for the eighty nine billion to the eleventy googleplex power time. Cause some rainy nights are just made to have fun.
rikyrah
stay on it.
will Sully speak up?
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Ruckus
@AA+ Bonds:
I’m not sure how they think, you may be giving them too much credit.
On the racist front, absolutely. I doubt you can put all of them into the racist box, some vote that way because their parents did/they always have, but many of them meet whatever definition of a racist one could come up with.
karen marie
@AA+ Bonds and @Ruckus: Since used items would be tax-free, there would be more second-hand stores than Starbucks.
Mark S.
If Cain thinks the national sales tax thing is such a great idea, why is he bothering with this 999 plan? Since neither of them will work or ever get passed, why not just go with the one he thinks is ideal?
Why do I even care?
driftglass
@burnspbesq:
He cannot cross that line.
The minute Sullivan either
1) owns his Liberal/Democratic-ness or,
2) acknowledges that American Conservatism has sucked ever since he signed on under Reagan, his marketability as Gay Conservative vanishes.
The following is excerpted from here: driftglass.blogspot.com/2009/12/here-is-revised-list.html
After all, Liberal gay political writers are a dime a dozen, and so in a strange way we find Andrew Sullivan locked in the same kind of mortal combat over labels — and for exactly the same reasons — as Roy Cohn’s character in “Angels In America” as he adamantly insisted — even as he was dying of AIDS — that he was not a “ho-mo-sex-shall”.
…
Likewise, even though Mr. Sullivan now, belatedly comes to believe much of what Liberals believe and finally deigns to notice a horde of grotesque truths about his Conservative Movement about which Liberals have been sounding the alarm for 30 years, Andrew Sullivan nonetheless looks us all straight in that eye and argues that he could not possibly be some mere Liberal.
Because in Mr. Sullivan’s world, “Liberal” does not refer to a political ideology, but to an impoverishing political ghetto from which no amount of “being right about everything” will permit you to achieve escape velocity. In Mr. Sullivan’s world, “Liberal” is a terrible disease that afflicts losers who do not get invited to spout their views on teevee.
…
Ruckus
@karen marie:
Not sure about that. At least at the state level where I am used items are subject to sales tax.
Of course Cain has no idea how his plan would work. Or not.
Ruckus
@eemom:
And of course as usual, but not always, you are absolutely correct.
Silver
Exactly right. Ryan gives Andy a chubb, and Cain doesn’t.
There’s no difference between Palin and horn dogs and Ryan and Sullivan.
Jane2
@Jenny: Word. This place is a lot more interesting with front pagers’ actual opinions than incessant “Sully” says and reactions to “Sully’s” opinions.
Short Bus Bully
@driftglass:
Yeah, that’s it in a nutshell.
/thread
ornery
Oh sully said something. Thank you for the very important information.
Surly Duff
@ornery:
Oh sully said something…stupid…yet again… Thank you for the very important information
Edited for clarity and more specificity.
Tractarian
@burnspbesq:
This:
It bears repeating. I think I might edit Andrew’s Wikipedia page so that it just contains this single paragraph.
replicnt6
Isn’t the conjunction of adjectives “specific and credible” usually followed by the noun “threat”?