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[Thad]

Bit of a violation of Hanlon's Razor, but yeah, I don't think they're nearly as enthusiastic about raising taxes for rich donors as they pretend.

[Mongrel]

I don't know - would it really be a violation of Hanlon's Razor to say that greed has overrode public concerns?

I mean,the article doesn't make a new argument. It's just saying the Dems are as bought-off as the GOP.

The main issue is that I doubt most people who're bought-off think of it that way. They heavily rationalize the whole thing so as to protect their mental image of themselves. But the effect on public policy is almost the same.

[Catloaf]

So......
There are only moderate Republicans and extreme Republicans in congress.  And the moderate ones are in disguise as democrats, only doing so to further the agenda and slow down the process of America's utter destruction so the public doesn't notice.  Then FOX news makes morons angry at the wrong people* ideas and ......

Fuck it.
 

*As there are no good people in this argument.

[Thad]

Pretty much.

What's funny/sad about the whole thing is that my family members who didn't understand my Nader vote a decade ago have pretty much come to understand my position.

As irritated as I've been with Nader since '04, I'd probably vote for him again if the election were tomorrow.  I'd say "Does anybody know any good third-party candidates?", but of course third-party candidates don't generally start running for office two years prior to the election like major-party candidates do.

[Royal☭]

Our first mistake was to be lulled into the "Democrats have done so much for us" argument.  The last good period for the Democrats was in the 30s, and that's because, against all odds, we managed to finally get a real firebrand populist into office at the right time.  That's now to say he overcame his rich roots, as FDR managed to back off the New Deal stuff towards the ladder part of his presidency under rhetoric about "deficit" and "America's debt" and bullshit argument we hear now.  And despite the successes the Democrats garnered during that period, it was still a shitty time to be black.

The model that progressives should have followed during the last two years was the Civil Rights movement during the 60s.  The idea that Lyndon Johnson could be a civil rights hero is laughable, but it was the work of people marching on the steps and basically shutting down industries and putting their lives on the line that brought about the Civil Rights Act, not the President or the Congress.

[Thad]

Well, sort of.  Can anyone really see Nixon passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 if he'd been in office?  Johnson browbeat his party until they passed it, knowing the political costs.

That said, the "What have you done for us LATELY?" mentality is, in my opinion, forgivable if "lately" is defined as "in the past thirty years".

[Mongrel]

Really, it's just funny to see how hard everyone's still chasing Reagan's tail.

[Mongrel]

It's official: All the tax cuts are being extended

[Royal☭]

It's worse than that

The estate tax, in a monstrous deal, will be lowered from 2009 levels, with a $5 million dollar exemption and a 35% rate, for two years as well. And, the deal adds what is now an annual patch to the alternative minimum class so it doesn’t hit people in the middle class. In exchange, extended unemployment benefits between 26 and 99 weeks will be continued for 13 months, to the end of December 2011 (costing around $65 billion)

Not only is the anti-Aristocracy tax being gutted, but this unemployment is just going towards current unemployment tiers, which only extend up to 99 weeks.  Meaning people who've already been unemployed for 99 weeks are SOL.

I think it is time to ditch Obama and the entire Democratic party.

[Mongrel]

I think one of the most interesting things is that we actually have no idea how many voters would really get out and actually vote for a blatantly socialist option, because the only politicians advocating such measures are derided fringe lurkers and (for the most part) the only media calling for such measures are really awful blatant left-wing hack rags.

Everyone else is trying so hard to be seppuku bipartisan or Glenn Beck that nothing else seems to even exist.

[Brentai]

At this rate we'll have to downsize the Senate anyway.

[Mongrel]

Oh, and in case anybody hasn't heard, Bernanke was quoted as saying QE3 isn't out of the question. Get ready for more money being printed!

Maybe we're not actually giving Obama enough credit and his long-term plan is to make the US dollar par with the Yen, making the current US debt worthless. Ha ha.

[Mongrel]

Goddamn you Kerry, where the fuck was this six years ago?

[Thad]

Firewall'd.  Context please?

Course, even without it, I can probably give a pretty accurate answer about how Democrats running for President are even bigger pussies than Democrats serving in the Senate.  And right now Kerry's job is to please voters in Massachusetts, not the rest of the country.

(Obama did a moderately better job of pretending not to be a pussy when he was running for President, but anyone who thinks telling the people who got him elected to go fuck themselves is a new development has forgotten about his vote on Bush's warrantless wiretapping.)

[Mongrel]

Try and watch the video later when you have the chance.

It features Kerry completely dismantling Republican arguments and generally demonstrating an amazing amount of spine. True he's justifying the recent tax cut extension disaster, but I haven't seen this clear an anti-Republican message from a senior Democrat in forever.

[Pacobird]

There is a not-very-poorly-concealed pattern here.

Expect Obama to make a killing on the lecture circuit in 2017~

[Mongrel]

Maybe Obama at 55 will lead the charge for a modification of the 22nd Amendment from absolute to consecutive. 

Too bad that even if that pie-in-the-sky pans out, he's going to waste the next six years anyway.

[Royal☭]

Also included in the tax deal is a Payroll Tax Holiday.

This wouldn't be a big deal, except for that the payroll tax goes to paying for one very important thing: Social Security.

As such, some people are looking at it and wondering why the Democratic party is destroying Social Security

[Royal☭]

Emboldened by how easily they won this tax cut deal, Republicans are now pushing for more.

You know, the easy way out for the Dems is right there at the bottom. 

...Bush tax cuts scheduled to expire in just over three weeks.

If the Dems simply do nothing at let the tax cuts expire, they can sit back and let the Republican House worry about it.  Then they could just sit back and say that Obama would veto any bill that doesn't end the top tax cuts.  Then the Dems would have a shot at keeping the House in 2010.  Of course, all of this assumes that the Dems actually want to get rid of that tax cut, and it's clear that I'm referring to some fictional alternate universe.

Still though, you gotta have some kind of twisted admiration for how the Republicans have managed to dictate policy for the last two years despite having one of the smallest minorities in history.

[Mongrel]

I've been living with a government like that for the past six years. Believe me, minority right-wing idiots miraculously dictating everything in the face of a completely useless leftist majority is no fun.