Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

How stupid are these people?

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

The words do not have to be perfect.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Not A Serious Community

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Not A Serious Community

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Be like these guys, instead!



Not that we want to give anybody any ideas…

Elsewhere, TFG is back on his bullsh*t…

The Washington Post:

… Just to put this in perspective, it was pretty objectionable when Trump asked Russia for help in 2016, but Putin wasn’t nearly the pariah he is now. A poll this week showed that just 1 percent of Americans have a positive view of Putin, compared with 88 percent who have a negative one (including 80 percent very negative). That’s entering territory generally reserved for your Osama bin Ladens, your Saddam Husseins and your Ayatollah Khomeinis.

To Trump, though, this appears to be merely a chance for yet more leverage. The logic seems to be: The American people hate you, so why not do something that at least a fair number of them might appreciate? (Indeed, that seems to be implicit in Trump’s comment that Putin “now would be willing” to do such a thing — apparently because the war in Ukraine has gone poorly for Russia?)

And indeed, that might not be a terrible bet. When is the last time a really substantial number of Republicans said they liked Putin? Right after Trump won in 2016, and we learned that Russia had interfered to assist in that victory. Favorable GOP views of Putin shot up from 16 percent the previous summer to 37 percent in one poll…

When Trump praised Putin’s strategic “genius” on the eve of the Ukraine invasion, perhaps Republicans could dismiss it as Trump providing pragmatic analysis — even as Trump conspicuously declined to judge Putin morally, and even as that narrower analysis aged poorly. Instead of condemning Trump, GOP leaders offered their own condemnations of Putin. And some who tried to toe Trump’s line, in varying ways, later corrected course.

Trump, though, is still playing the hits. And the hits apparently include seeing just how long his party and supporters will tolerate his treating a man they hate as a legitimate political ally. Because, as always, the point is winning.

Somebody’s feeding him lines — my bet’s on Young Jared, at the behest of his Saudi paymasters, but that’s just *me*…

Reader Interactions

178Comments

  2. 2.

    dmsilev

    That Norwegian border sign was presumably put up in response to an escalating number of …occurrences. What poor soul on the border patrol got the job of tracking incidences of literal dick waving at the Russians?

  3. 3.

    Betty Cracker

    Agree 100% with Go Like Hell in the tweets above — except for the unearned credit extended to the eldest Trump spawn. She’s every bit as dumb and unoriginal as her idiot brothers and old man.

    Is Trump’s latest appeal to Putin getting much media play? Good lord, it should be, but my guess is nah:

    The highly paid blip-makers are incompetent at producing blips.

  5. 5.

    Anne Laurie

    @dmsilev: What poor soul on the border patrol got the job of tracking incidences of literal dick waving at the Russians?

    My first thought: How many visitors react by peeing on the sign?

  7. 7.

    SiubhanDuinne

    If that (or any) reporter had asked the Chris Rock question when Jen — or, gods forbid, OHJ himself — was at the podium, I’m not sure he’d have lived to tell the story. Where is it written that the President of the United States is required to take a position on every.single.thing that appears in the pages of People magazine? Beyond stupid.

    Oh, and Our Lady of the Furrowed Brow has decided to support KBJ’s SCOTUS nomination. So that’s a good thing.

  8. 8.

    sdhays

    I agree with @golikehellmachi that Donald Tramp has never had an original thought, but “_____ Biden was paid by ______ and it’s oh, so scandalous (and I’m jealous even though it’s not true)” is more of a Trampish mad-libs than an original thought.

  9. 9.

    Ken

    Bedingfield is asked about Chris Rock and if the White House is doing anything to support comedians being attacked

    “Your press pass has been revoked. These gentlemen will be escorting you out of the building.”

    Though I suspect the reaction of the rest of the WHPC would be less fawning than it was when TFG’s administration did this.

  10. 10.

    germy

    Sen. Joe Manchin shoots down Biden's latest idea of 20 percent minimum tax on billionaires that would tax income & unrealized gains.

    "You can't tax something that's not earned — earned income is what we're based on," he says. "Unrealized gains is not the way to do it."

    — Alex Bolton (@alexanderbolton) March 29, 2022

    God forbid that billionaires—who pledge their assets as collateral to open massive lines of credit, allowing them to spend cash without ever being taxed—pay the same mark-to-market property tax that every homeowner pays directly and every renter pays indirectly. ? https://t.co/PHt5wp936S

    — Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) March 29, 2022

  11. 11.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    I guess the war is in it’s end game now because the NYT is posting hot takes how the whole thing was a genius move by Putin and he planned this out all along . Yes, it’s back to the “Putin is a 11d chess player” media narrative now. ROFL

    What if Putin didn’t Misculate (warning; NYT opinion link, not recommended for those with compromised immune systems and other health issues)

    “Yes, yes, it’s merely factually correct that the Russian army has been defeated by a bunch a farmers in basically a large scale reenactment of Lexington and Concord, but the counterfactuals clearly show that…”

  15. 15.

    Mousebumples

    Off topic, but since I’m actually not super late to the thread for the first time in over a week, so I figured I’d give a Baby Mouse update.

    He was born about a week and a half ago, and we’re both doing well. His big sister is adjusting better than I’d hoped, and she can be a great help with finding his nuk or picking out a new onesie or burping him.

    Thanks to everyone here. While I tend to arrive to most threads long after they’re posted, reading the posts and comments helps keep my mind engaged (and awake) – especially during middle of the night feeding sessions!

  18. 18.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    For some questions, if you’ve got to parse technicalities on the answer, the fundamental answer’s pretty obvious. Technically, VVP may not have committed Russia’s biggest military blunder since Brezhnev rolled into Afghanistan, and technically, TFG may not have just committed treason, but they’re both so close fundamentally that the technicalities don’t matter at this point.

  23. 23.

    Sure Lurkalot

    Surely some investigative reporter (oxymoronic?) has already compiled lists of the ill gotten gains of Trump’s spawn?

  26. 26.

    germy

    me (foolish, stupid): heres a series of problems i'm having with my work computer, do you have a way of resolving them? alternately, can I get around this by using my own computer?

    tech support (wise, above reproach, already closing the ticket): you cannot use your own computer.

    — lauren (@NotABigJerk) March 29, 2022

    me (idiot, moron): hello outside vendor, your software is doing this weird thing when i do X on this page. can you fix this?

    vendor (makes 7 times my salary): we have fixed a bug in the code of the page. so long as you don't do X the weird thing will not occur.

    — lauren (@NotABigJerk) March 29, 2022

    me (huge huge dumbass): hey I need access to these programs in order to perform basic job functions

    tech support (shining with interior light): why do you need access to these programs

    — Ladies Jacket Club (@subtlerbutler) March 29, 2022

  27. 27.

    cmorenc

    Bedingfield is asked about Chris Rock and if the White House is doing anything to support comedians being attacked…

    Bedingfield’s answer should have been:  “I wasn’t aware the White House Press corps is under attack…”

  31. 31.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Adam was speculating that Trump was taking Putin’s advice about the Jan 6 coup attempt and I believe it – that has all the signs of Putin level of not understand shit and him being used a fixed game; the assumption that Congress was like Putin’s pet Dumas, just filled with lackies,  and the Capital Police would run is basically the same thing Putin was assuming with Ukraine.

    I suspect when the history is done and written we find out that this was a bromance between Putin and Trump; two damn fools whose big life achievement was falling out of the right wombs. That while both Trump and Putin did try shit in 2016, Trump’s election was some black swan event and these two were such idiots they never did a post morum on the election, just assumed it meant they were super genesis, tried the same stunt with the pandemic, it failed, tried the same stunt with the 2020 election, it failed,  now trying it again and falling with Ukraine.

  34. 34.

    Kay

    @germy:

    Zeke Miller
    @ZekeJMiller
    ·Mar 29
    Biden budget has Manchin priorities: Tax rich, cut deficit

    They have all convinced themselves that one of Joe Manchin’s “priorities” is taxing the rich, although everything Joe Manchin does contradicts that belief.

    It’s wacky.

  36. 36.

    Betty Cracker

    To be fair, the WH reporters have been asking presidents about dumb shit like the Oscars incident as long as I can remember. I believe Obama was asked about Kanye West’s stupid stunt at the Grammys that one year and rightly observed that West is a jackass.

  40. 40.

    Steeplejack

    Just want to reiterate what a worthless piece of shit Susan Collins is. From that Washington Post article:

    When Trump in 2020 used the presidency to leverage Ukraine for an investigation into his next opponent, a number of Republicans admitted it was unseemly, but said it wasn’t impeachable. They moved on and stood by him. One of them even ventured that Trump had learned a “pretty big lesson” about asking a foreign country to investigate a political rival, and predicted he would “be much more cautious in the future.”

    Guess who that was.

  45. 45.

    Gravenstone

    @germy: tech support (shining with interior light): why do you need access to these programs

    I cry because it’s going on two weeks since I asked IT for access to a specific SAP module that I will need going forward to perform part of my job.

     

    *sigh

  46. 46.

    Kay

    Malinda Lo
    @malindalo
    Mar 27
    In the vast majority of cases, book bans and challenges don’t generate “free publicity.” Instead, they result in books being quietly removed from school libraries, or in libraries preemptively not ordering those books in the first place.

    The Washington Post has done really good work covering the unfashionable “cancel culture” issue – the state laws restricting speech that the cancel culture panic inspired and promoted.

  47. 47.

    narya

    Hospital billing departments . . .
    Yeah, I am going to end up on the phone. THIS is the part of our health care system I hate the most. I believe they actually owe ME a little money, but I cannot get a straight answer via the messaging system.
    Congrats, Mousefamily!!

  48. 48.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Steeplejack:

    Guess who that was. 

    You told us in the beginning! ?

    Also, fuck her now, and fuck her when she said that (Ugh.  I can still hear it.), and fuck her at every point in between.

    Fuck Susan Collins.

  49. 49.

    germy

    @Kay:

    The AP repeats Manchin’s bullshit:

     

    Reducing budget deficits, battling inflation and raising revenue from the wealthy are also major demands for Manchin.

    “He remains seriously concerned about the financial status of our country and believes fighting inflation by restoring fairness to our tax system and paying down our national debt must be our first priority,” his spokesperson, Sam Runyon, said Monday.

  50. 50.

    matt

    He really asked what the White House is doing about Will Smith slapping comedians? They just let anyone in, don’t they?

  53. 53.

    germy

    I love what the right wing considers a “self help guru”

    Curious journalist Andy Ngo asks Professor Emeritus Jordan Peterson how psychology can explain why Antifa is so evil and bad. JBP says it's "revenge against God for the crime of Being." Then he starts crying. pic.twitter.com/oIhFVyRWt1

    — bad_stats (@thebadstats) March 28, 2022

  55. 55.

    Gravenstone

    @matt: It’d be nice if on occasion, a quiet “Duuuuuuuuude, really?” was heard from the gallery in response to one of their colleagues showing their complete ass (again). Peer pressure might be the only thing to rein those idiots in.

  63. 63.

    Kay

    @germy:

    raising revenue from the wealthy

    They all repeat it. It’s often not included in what he just told him so they add it.

    I think it’s the West Virginia thing. They imagine he’s a coal miner so therefore wants to tax the rich, although he is actually a rich person.

  65. 65.

    L85NJGT

    Occam’s Razor would suggest those sanctions are biting Trump in the ass.

    Boo fucking hoo.

  70. 70.

    Ken

    @germy: “Professor Emeritus” is sometimes a warning sign; a polite way of saying “no dementia exception for tenure”.

  72. 72.

    Jay

    Putin’s asset is begging for more help from his war criminal who is mass murdering Ukrainians. Meanwhile Russia today again said they want to install him back into office. Outrageous there has been no accountability despite countless crimes https://t.co/jRCfzm25iz— Olga Lautman ?? (@OlgaNYC1211) March 30, 2022

  75. 75.

    Jager

    @MattF:

    Most of them speak English with an English accent, most of the English teachers are from Great Britain. (or they were)

  79. 79.

    Steeplejack

    @Kay:

    Well, actually (//), when rich politicians (or their minions) say they are “seriously concerned about the financial status of our country and [. . .] restoring fairness to our tax system,” they usually mean making poor people pay income tax so that they have some “skin in the game.” That’s fair.

  80. 80.

    Barbara

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: My husband has taken to listening to something called Animarchy, a person who has been giving updates on his view of what’s happening militarily.  They aren’t daily, but a few times a week, or even weekly. One of the most startling things he said is that one reason the Russians seem not to be using the full brunt of their air force is that they actually lack fuel — they don’t have nearly as much refinery capacity as we do, proportionately, and most of their exported oil is not refined.  In addition, they can’t afford spare parts so damaged equipment can’t be repaired.  That’s in addition to the obvious issues of not having enough trained pilots, and the entire country is so beset by graft and corruption there is no way it hasn’t made its way into military procurement.

    They also rely on open network satellites for communication, unlike the U.S. and China.  Which really sent this guy around the bend because his father served in some kind of Sig Ops capacity for the Australian army.

    Plus, as he noted, the Ukrainians have been trained by NATO forces and are clearly using NATO tactics.

    In the not so great category, he thinks that both Ukraine and Russia have each lost 10,000 personnel.  Thinking about the level of our own losses in Vietnam, that is a sobering statistic.

    I couldn’t find out his actual qualifications for doing this, so FWIW.

  81. 81.

    Jay

    The Russian govt “legalizes” “parallel imports”: the sale of goods without the permission of copyright holders. The list will include intellectual property like movies, music, software, and “inventions.” Russia goes from int’l pariah to PIRATE ?‍☠️. pic.twitter.com/o0imRpi1WX— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) March 30, 2022

  82. 82.

    Kay

    @Steeplejack:

    I should be grateful. Unlike the “Joe Manchin wants to raise taxes on the rich” people I actually read what he says. Unless I miss my guess he was hinting about a payroll tax increase. That’s what his incoherent rambling sounded like – where he was headed. I thought “this WEASEL plans to pay down the deficit with increased taxes on WAGES”

    I bet he tries it. Gotta watch the weasels.

  85. 85.

    raven

    @Jay: Taiwan was like that when I was there on R&R, you could buy the encyclopedia Britannica near the cost of the paper and printing!

  87. 87.

    Kay

    Julia Davis
    @JuliaDavisNews
    · 15h
    Meanwhile on Russian state TV:
    Host Evgeny Popov says it’s time for the Russian people to call on Americans to change “the regime in the U.S.” before its term expires “and to again help our partner Trump to become President.”

    Not even hiding it anymore.

  91. 91.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kay: Also, don’t forget that the Russkies also celebrated the installation of the orange shitstain back in 2016.

  94. 94.

    Mike in NC

    Donald Fucking Trump: the worst person that ever lived whose name wasn’t Hitler or Stalin (or Putin). Bravo! We have a few shitbags running for office that cling to him like a life raft.

  102. 102.

    sdhays

    At what point will Putin lovers slink away due to the stench of his overwhelming failure? Will them coming collapse of the northern front Ukraine? When Ukraine clears them from Chernihiv and Sumy and Kharkiv and Kherson? When Ukraine retakes Crimea? When Ukraine removes Russian troops from the 2014 occupied territory?

    I’m a little surprised that Tramp has doubled-down on his Putin-love simply due to Putin not looking so powerful nowadays. But I guess true love (and total treasonous capitulation) conquers all. I hope we eventually find out what Putin and Tramp talked about Helsinki.

  104. 104.

    Steeplejack

    @Kay:

    Also:

    Sen. Joe Manchin shoots down Biden’s latest idea of 20 percent minimum tax on billionaires that would tax income & unrealized gains.

    “You can’t tax something that’s not earned—earned income is what we’re based on,” he says. “Unrealized gains is not the way to do it.”

    — Alex Bolton (@alexanderbolton) March 29, 2022

    God forbid that billionaires—who pledge their assets as collateral to open massive lines of credit, allowing them to spend cash without ever being taxed—pay the same mark-to-market property tax that every homeowner pays directly and every renter pays indirectly. ?
    https://t.co/PHt5wp936S

    — Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) March 29, 2022

  105. 105.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Kay:

    Meanwhile on Russian state TV:
    Host Evgeny Popov says it’s time for the Russian people to call on Americans to change “the regime in the U.S.” before its term expires “and to again help our partner Trump to become President.”

    And somehow my RWNJ brother will take this as proof Putin was in the tank for Hillary.

  106. 106.

    Barbara

    @sdhays: Whatever mystery remains regarding Putin’s hold over Trump, there appears to be no mystery that Russia has financed most of the far right political organizations that operate in European NATO members, but especially in UK, France, Italy, Austria and Germany.   Many leaders of these organizations openly praised Putin in the past and celebrated meetings with him in photographs that will be hard to explain or extinguish.  Most of them will just fade away as voters turn to untainted leaders.

    There is nothing new about this tactic.  It seems to be widely agreed that the USSR was the main financier of European terrorist groups like the Red Brigade and Bader-Meinhof.

    Putin seems to be stuck in 1910, unable to understand that economic superiority exerts a stronger pull over people than war ever could, because the attraction is largely voluntary.

  108. 108.

    trollhattan

    @Barbara:

    It may turn out that Putin is war-doing because the Russian economy is cratering and he requires an external cause to blame it on, to preserve Vlad’s Reich (whatever Russian is for reich). The Russian kleptocracy is not sustainable and they’ve hollowed out whatever middle class they might have once had. Reason: “Ukraine Nazis and their western enablers!”

  110. 110.

    Steeplejack

    @Steeplejack:

    Note: Not trying to get into the weeds of a detailed policy discussion, just noting that Manchin is typically much clearer about things that he doesn’t want than things that he (hypothetically) does want.

  111. 111.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Kay: There is no doubt in my mind that Manchin will try to pay down debt by increasing payroll taxes. The cherry on top, for him, is that it will benefit all of his fatcat buddies personally and it will benefit Republicans at the polls.

  112. 112.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Steeplejack: I’ve heard conservatives explain that even a flat tax is not regressive enough because it still depends on how much money you make–that the only fair taxation is flat fee-for-service. Paupers and billionaires pay the same amount, Margaret Thatcher style!

  114. 114.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    that the only fair taxation is flat fee-for-service

     

    Seems unfair that rich people don’t get a discount as a reward for all that they do.

  115. 115.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @MattF: Yep. There’s a Norwegian comedy skit my Finnish relatives are fond of, making fun of the Danish language. Other than the Danish parts, the entire thing is in English. Which presumes that their audience can also understand a comedy skit in English.

  116. 116.

    Kay

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    I just feel it’s been clear since the beginning that raising taxes is the real sticking point. Which I assumed! The Trump tax cuts were a huge boon to wealthy people. Of course they’re fighting like mad to keep them- it’s billions and billions of dollars, to them, every year. To sort of pretend that this is not a huge issue in these negotiations is just silly.

  117. 117.

    Alison Rose ???

    @rikyrah: Good morning! Was it you who asked someone if they were watching Bridgerton S2? Because OMGGGGGG but also I’m so tired because I could barely force myself to stop watching last night. I work from home and am verrrrrry tempted to watch during the day, except it’ll be annoying to get interrupted by phone calls.

  118. 118.

    Jeffro

    @Matt McIrvin:I’ve heard conservatives explain that even a flat tax is not regressive enough because it still depends on how much money you make–that the only fair taxation is flat fee-for-service.

    WOW

    I haven’t heard that one before, not even from my RWNJ dad.

    How do they calculate the ‘fee’ for having the world’s biggest standing army, navy, air force, etc?  Isn’t the DOD budget something like $750B/year at this point?

    $750B divided by 350M Americans is…$2143 for every man, woman, and child in America.  And that’s just for “national defense”.  Hey poors, y’all better get busy working those extra shifts at Applebees!

  119. 119.

    Kay

    There should be a liberal lobbying group “Raise Taxes on the Rich”. That’s it. No other issues. It’s a + 65% issue in polling. How does this not exist already?

  120. 120.

    Barbara

    @Baud: I thought it meant revenge against God because God exists but it could be revenge against God because they exist.  It’s too bizarre to ponder over it much.

  121. 121.

    burnspbesq

    I’m shocked (not!) by the amount of stupid in the commentary and “explainers” on the new tax proposal. Some of it has to be deliberate disinformation, but some of it might just be ignorance/lack of understanding.

    Not sure which category Manchin goes into. But his basic point—we don’t tax unrealized appreciation—is simply wrong. There is a lot of unrealized appreciation that we don’t tax, and for good reason (the administrate burden of determining a value for non-publicly-traded property, and then fighting about it with the owners, is significant enough to erode the revenue gains). But Section 475 is an example of a MTM regime that works so well that not even the taxpayers affected by it bitch about it.

  123. 123.

    Barbara

    @trollhattan: Well that makes him double extra stupid because war doesn’t generally make your economy stronger.  It just accelerates the rate at which things really start to bite.

  124. 124.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Lots of things libs need don’t exist.  Libs tend to be incredibly siloed.

    Besides, who would provide the funding?

  125. 125.

    jonas

    @Jeffro:  They’re literally talking about a poll tax. They used to have those in medieval England. It worked out great. Google “Rising of 1381”.

  127. 127.

    Baud

    @Jeffro:

    We do have fee for service for some things.  National park passes for example.  It’s not a good way to fund all of government however.

  129. 129.

    Ruckus

    @Anne Laurie:

    I’m going with 79%.

    It’s just a wild guess but it is based upon being one of the 50% of humans who normally stand up to pee.

    Also I like to see that Norwegian’s still have a sense of humor.

    @Betty Cracker:

    Agree with you here. 100000%

  134. 134.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: There are two meanings of “poll tax”–Thatcher’s “community charge” was often called one because of an old definition that just meant a head tax, unrelated to voting rights.

  136. 136.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: It confused me for a long time too, because of course in the US the most relevant example is the poll taxes that were used in the Jim Crow South to restrict voting.

  137. 137.

    burnspbesq

    @Steeplejack:

    Dealers in securities are required to MTM their non-inventory holdings annually (treated as though they were sold for FMV on the last day of the year). Gains and losses so recognized give rise to basis adjustments in order to avoid double taxation of gain or double recognition of loss.

    MTM is trivially easy for publicly traded property. I’m sure that if I were subject to a MTM regime, Vanguard would figure it out and put it on my year-end statement. It’s do-able for other kinds of property, but if you’re going down that road you’d better double the size of IRS Chief Counsel and DOJ Tax Division, because you’re going to have a lot more litigation.

  138. 138.

    Ruckus

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    SFB thinks that every thought and thing he does is absolutely superior to every other human. He’s not the only human who thinks his superiority/greatness is based upon his abject stupidity. It appears that vova feels the exact same way. The seemingly only difference between them is that vova knows how to have people relieved of the property of life and SFB only knows how to go too far in proving his level of stupidity. And the end result is that one makes a lot more people dead and the other make a lot more wish he would just learn to shut the fuck up, which of course he’d have to be dead to accomplish.

  139. 139.

    p.a.

    So did the journalist(s) ask Manchin if his “unearned income shouldn’t be taxed” statement was sarcasm?

     

    I kid.  I kid.

  140. 140.

    Ksmiami

    Hmm. Since I understand billionaire  language and the massive egos that go with this group, why don’t we call it the Forbes /Fortune Mag tax? If you declare your assets so you get on the richest list, then you get a 10 percent annual tax bill based on that..See easy peasy.

  141. 141.

    Baud

    @p.a.:

    Unearned income typically refers to capital gains and other investment income.  It is taxed at a lower rate than earned income.

    What is usually not taxed is unrealized income.

  142. 142.

    ian

    @jonas:

    They’re literally talking about a poll tax. They used to have those in medieval England.

    Jim Crow South had them as well.

  143. 143.

    Villago Delenda Est

    OK, is Comirnaty By Nature being serious here, or is this Poe bait.  Because the White House Press Corpse sucks, blows, AND bites.

  146. 146.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Baud: This is totally bass ackwards.  Unearned income should be taxed at a higher rate than earned income.  Let the “investor” parasites suffer.

  149. 149.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @burnspbesq: if you’re going down that road you’d better double the size of IRS Chief Counsel and DOJ Tax Division, because you’re going to have a lot more litigation.

    I’m not seeing a problem here.  Need to triple the IRS to begin with, to have the resources to go after billionaire parasites.  Also, too, beef up the courts to deal with the resulting increase in litigation; they’re inadequate already for the current load.  Again also, too, make jackholes like TFG and Alex Jones pay royally for their contempt of the court system

  151. 151.

    Citizen Alan

    @Betty Cracker:

    I remember the moment that a sizable trunk of America decided that Barack Obama hated white people. It was when he gave his honest opinion about the Henry Lewis gates incident, something that reporters would never have asked John McCain about in a million years had he become president instead.

  152. 152.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Villago Delenda Est: After seeing the full tweet (took a while to load on Win 10/Firefox latest for me) it’s obvious that this was sarcasm.  Because the White House Press Corpse does indeed blow, suck, and bite.

  153. 153.

    trollhattan

    @Barbara:

    Will link this Kamil Galeev thread  on one outcome he may be pursuing. It’s deeply cynical and at the same time, plausible, should isolating Russia further from the West be one of the goals rather than an unfortunate side-effect of the invasion.

    After decades of watching Republicans here descend into tribalism, I’m inclined to believe it.

  155. 155.

    Ruckus

    @Jager:

    Met a girl in a Copenhagen store who spoke english with a perfect Oxford accent and asked her if she was english. She told me no, she was born and raised in Copenhagen, her english teacher was from Oxford. She also asked me how I knew it was an Oxford accent because no one else had ever asked and she knew that my buddy and I were absolutely not from Oxford, or any other location in the UK.

  158. 158.

    Ruckus

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    Never forget that Manchin is a fat cat himself. Not as fat as other fat cats but still, a fat cat. And his fat catness was made the old fashioned way, coal. He is very much fat cat in his regard for maintaining fat catness of himself and other fat cats.

  160. 160.

    Jeffro

    @sdhays:

    @Baud:

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I want a voucher program for my share of the national defense.  They can skip charging me for it.  I propose that the Fro family pays…The Fro Defense Corps…and charge it with defending the Fro household against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

    $8572 back in my pocket, just like that, suckas!

  161. 161.

    trollhattan

    @Citizen Alan:

    I’ve heard it from the lips of “libertarians” and since beneath every libertarian’s Ayn Rand tshirt resides a Republican, the judges say “yes.”

  163. 163.

    Kirk Spencer

    @Kay: after years of holding the opposite view, I’ve come to believe capital gains should be taxed as income. MAYBE have a lower rate for long term gains, but definitely not for short term gains.

  165. 165.

    germy

    if will smith can just walk up and slap chris rock who else could he slap? god? interrupting his divine plan for us? forcing us to live a life subject to the whims of chance instead of his divine architecture? senseless chaos until a meaningless death? then oblivion?

    — thomas violence (@thomas_violence) March 30, 2022

  166. 166.

    Barbara

    @trollhattan: That would be really tragic for the many Russians whose lives are sacrificed to this strategy.  One of the books I have read recently is a biography of Churchill wherein the author states that Stalin’s “advantage” in fighting Germany was that he literally didn’t care what happened to his own combatants, much less enemy combatants.  GB and US didn’t have that “advantage.”  Maybe Putin is just channeling Stalin here, but if so, it is tragic that 75 years hasn’t advanced the cause of Russian people very much.

  170. 170.

    Ishiyama

    @Barbara: @Baud: I thought it meant revenge against God because God exists but it could be revenge against God because they exist.  It’s too bizarre to ponder over it much.

    “Warring against God” is one of the crimes in the Islamic Republic of Iran. I once worked helping asylum applicants from there.

  173. 173.

    Tenar Arha

    @Ishiyama: Yes. I loved that trilogy, particularly The Tombs of Atuan. I read it first by accident, so even though it was supposed to be the tales from Ged’s life, I always thought of it as the tale of Tenar too. & then Le Guin confirmed it with the sequels.   (She was & still is one of my favorite authors).

     

    ETA typo

  174. 174.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Ruckus: ​
     He’s a parasite, and his family are parasites, particularly his daughter. No quarter for such offal.

  176. 176.

    MsBehaving

    @Baud:   the “poll” in poll tax means per “head”; it is not necessarily or exclusively related to voting.

  177. 177.

    SWMBO

    @Jay: ​
      Get ASCAP on it. Those bastards took down several venues that were using copywritten work without paying royalties. They can easily take down Putin. They have put at least one local restaurant out of business for using material without paying royalties. They will nickel and dime Russia to death.

  178. 178.

    sab

    @Jager: I had a neighbor who moved to Norway to avoid the draft during Vietnam war. His mom was Norwegian. He thoufht that maybe he could teach English or something, but they told him that he didn’t actually speak English. He spoke American English.

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