Catball wrote: Can anybody out there tell me the difference between the tea party and the taliban. No this is not a joke. Seriously, the tea party wants to destroy the american government. The t-party crew walked into a church and killed a doctor because they like what he was doing. That was in Wichita,KS. The t-party does want to dismantle our government. They don't want women to have any rights. M. Bachmann said you should be submissive and do whatever they want you to do. They want rich white men & women to take over the country. They don't care if our kids have good schools and they hate unions because they give the money to people that need it. They believe blacks and mexicans should all be locked up. They think standing around holding their machine guns is cool while babbling about the bible. - Sequester-Sized Government Waste Can Go First
Dear Comrade Catball,
The difference between the Taliban and the Tea Party is that the Tea Party believes in constitutional government as expressed in the United States Constitution. The Taliban believes in Sharia law as expressed in the Quran and Shunna, or the life of the prophet Muhammad.
The Tea Party supports your right to be let alone, the Taliban wants to make it a capital crime for you to fly a kite.
As to George Tiller’s death in Wichita, KS, I can’t find any material that supports your notion that Scott Roeder, the man who killed Tiller, was a Tea Party member. Instead, he is an avowed prolife activist who thinks that abortion is a crime. He got life in prison with no parole.
You seem to be arguing that Michele Bachmann, arguably one of the more influential women in the US- by virtue of her role in congress- is saying that women should be subordinate to men. I think her actions say otherwise. She did run for president after all...against a bunch of men.
I'm sorry. I had trouble typing that last line because I had to reload my semi-automatic weapon that I use to change the channels on cable TV.
The rest of your rant is too stupid to be addressed seriously.
Proverbs 26:28 “A lying tongue hates the truth and the malicious mouth works trouble.”
Who do you think you are? Ezra Klein?
DuaneUrban wrote: Hi John, how do we fix this mess we are in? - Sequester-Sized Government Waste Can Go First
Dear Comrade Urban,
If were running for office, I would propose:
1) Impose term limits on Congress.
2) Enact a single-subject rule in Congress to prevent pork barrel spending from being inserted into bills, say, on disaster relief.
3) Limit all legislation to 100 pages.
4) Enact a balanced budget amendment to the constitution.
5) Scrap the current tax code in favor of a flat tax or fair tax.
6) Allow no bills be introduced unless they qualified under the 10th Amendment as powers specifically reserved for the federal government.
Carl469 wrote: Lumping in Al Sharpton and John Boehner together as "liberals?" Maybe John Ransom qualifies as the idiot here. - Another Reason Ezra Klein is an Idiot
Dear Comrade 469,
John Boehner helped Obama get his tax increases through congress. If that doesn’t qualify as a liberal, Boehner sure did a pretty good imitation of it.
Here’s the thing: After campaigning for two years as dead-set against tax increases, it’s a little much for Boehner to change his mind within hours of the general election tally to decide that tax increases are OK.
The problem with party politics is that both parties really stand for the same things right now. Until the GOP offers more than just cosmetic differences, the conservative base won’t take them seriously.
DG wrote: I just learned Ezra Kein is not an economist. He has a BA in journalism. (Evidently with a minor in BS.) - Another Reason Ezra Klein is an Idiot
Dear DG,
Comment of the week, brother.
Bitobush wrote: Mr ignorance has spoken once again. Hate to break it to you Johnny, but the tsunami in Japan was a geological event not a weather event. While tsunamis can sometimes be caused by weather, the one in Japan was triggered by an earthquake. Get the facts straight, before we mistake you for just a big bag of wind. - Another Reason Ezra Klein is an Idiot
Dear Comrade Bitters,
Yeah. Score one for you. The sentence should say “natural disaster” rather than weather event.
The scoreboard reads: Ransom 5,847 to Bit’O 1.
That’s even worse than the Chicago Bears beating the Green Bay Packers 2-0 in 1938.
From PackersNews.com:
The Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears played in a downpour that kept scoring to a bare minimum at City Stadium on Sept. 18, 1938. The Bears won 2-0.
Packers quarterback Arnie Herber's failure to handle a low snap from punt formation led to Chicago's only score. The Bears got a safety after the Packers' Tom Jones fell on the ball in the end zone.
The Packers' Clarke Hinkle missed a 37-yard field goal three plays from the end of the game.
Congrats, Comrade Bito-Hinkle.
Joseph64 wrote: The blame for the housing meltdown can be laid squarely on two parties. The lenders, who made it easy for unqualified borrowers to buy homes they knew they couldn't afford and the borrowers, who bought the homes anyway knowing they couldn't afford them. - America's Fiscal Stupidity Mirrors Detroit
Dear Comrade 64,
The two parties to which blame can be assigned for the housing crisis are the Democrats and the Republicans.
Once the parties teamed up to allow the Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the other quasi-government banks to guarantee mortgages, it was all over.
Banks and homeowners just did the natural thing, which is to do what they thought was in their best interest.
I will give banks credit for trying to invent ways to monetize subprime mortgages in a way that would lessen risk. Their math was off, but they didn’t really need to do that.
The one thing that TARP proved was that the banks were right when they guessed that the federal government would guarantee the banking industry against disaster come what may.
From our own Dan Mitchell:
The just-confirmed Treasury Secretary Jack Lew was given a huge bonus for leaving Citigroup several years ago. Did the company give Lew a bonus because they were happy to shed his $1.1 million salary after he presided over gigantic losses at the firm’s alternative investments division?
Don’t be silly. He was showered with money specifically for leaving the company to take a “high level position with the United States government”
Again, nice work if you can get it.
But Lew’s loot is pocket change compared to the $115 million that former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin received for helping to steer the company into financial collapse.
So is this evidence that the private sector is systematically stupid?
Nope.
He continues:
According to the Treasury Department’s Special Inspector General, Citigroup got $45 billion of TARP handouts and $301 billion of guarantees.
Not to mention an estimated $13.4 billion subsidy thanks to the government’s too-big-to-fail policy.
Since we’re talking apples and oranges, I have no idea how to compare the value of the payments to Lew and Rubin with the value of all the handouts and subsidies that Citigroup got (and is still getting) from taxpayers.
But I do know that mere mortals like you and me don’t have a prayer of “earning” the incredibly high returns that Citigroup received by “investing” in Robert Rubin and Jack Lew.
And let’s not forget what Goldman Sachs “earned” by “investing” in the previous Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner.
Hey, nice work if you can get it.
What’s really hilarious to me is seeing the liberal, hippie-types have to rally around guys like Lew and Geithner and Rubin.
They so screwed you, Comrade Doctor.
Vietnam Vet wrote: The article is an interesting take on 'how stuff happens', but one sentence stood out in my mind. " ... Woodward called out Obama in print on hyperbole over sequestration cuts. Prior to publication, Woodward says, a White House staffer threatened him over the story. ..." How does the White House staffer know the content "prior to publication" ... ??? Are media outlets required to 'have their homework graded by a teacher' at the White House before 'telling us the news'? - Obama’s Rat Madness
Dear Vet,
Woodward called the White House to get comment, which is a normal practice. It’s kind of journalism etiquette. I don’t have a problem with it.
Especially when they send email apologies for their threats.
GII67 wrote: Dear Comrade John, A nice job. As the ship of the administration tips ever so much more to port, the rats begin to run to starboard. It is still obvious that neither political party has the will to cutback any spending. It is also obvious that without serious tax reform, entitlement reform, and spending reforms, the economy will continue to underperform as you have analyzed for us before. The only ethical thing is to propose raising taxes to balance the budget. After all, that would be the difference between Germany and Greece. - Obama’s Rat Madness
Dear Comrade 67,
The only moral thing would be to stop deficit spending and actually balance the budget.
No matter what marginal tax rates have been tried, federal revenue collection remains between 15 percent to 20 percent of GDP.
Michael Barone of NRO explains it:
Why is that? As the late Jack Kemp liked to say, when you tax something, you get less of it. When the government took 91 percent of what the law defined as adjusted gross income over a certain amount, not many people had adjusted gross income over that amount.
According to a Congressional Research Service study, the effective income-tax rate on the top 0.01 percent of earners in the days of nominal 91 percent tax rates was only 45 percent. Others have pegged it at 31 percent.
In the 1970s, when the top rate on wage and salary income was 50 percent, and 70 percent on investment income, high earners spent much of their time and energy seeking tax shelters. The animal spirits of capitalists, to use John Maynard Keynes’s term, were directed less at productive investment and more at tax avoidance.
Barone goes on to explain that in Europe they use regressive taxes like value-added taxes to get the additional revenues that a progressive income-tax scheme can’t produce. And a VAT falls more heavily on the poor and the middle class.
Raymond, (Ret) wrote: Please notice that Woodward gave Obama a pass by saying he was sure Obama was not aware that stuff like this was going on. He should have. Just like Hillary should have been aware of the repeated pleas for help from Ambassador Stevens. Yet another instance of a Democrat excusing culpability by pleading incompetence. - Obama’s Rat Madness
Dear Raymond,
I think Woodward was just putting Obama in a box.
There’s pressure too coming from inside the White House to exonerate the “staffer.” Mentioning Obama puts him squarely in the spotlight.
Come on, Mr. President: Either you did or didn’t approve what people did on your behalf.
As one reporter asked White House Press Jester Jay Carney: “Just one quick follow-up on the Woodward thing. Another longtime, respected Washington journalist, Ron Fournier, came out and talked about Woodward, and he said that -- he talked about his own story about how he’s received many what he called “vulgar and abusive” emails and phone calls from White House officials. I mean, have you ever heard of anything like that?”
We’re waiting. Mr. Obama…
Yachtsman388 wrote: If that's incompetence [threating Bob Woodward], it's small potatoes compared with conservatard incompetence. The neocon brand incompetence cost us more than 4,000 American lives and over $1.3 trillion and they never could find those WMD's that they had no reason to believe were ever there. - Obama’s Rat Madness
Dear Comrade Kapt’nKrunch,
I never cared about WMDs.
There were a lot of other good reasons to invade Iraq. The occupation was screwed up for sure, but that was mostly Rumsfeld.
Abe Lincoln didn’t always manage the American Civil War well, to say the least. But that doesn’t mean that the war wasn’t worth fighting.
Not sure if you have ever heard of the liberal phenomena called the Arab Spring? You either approved of it of you didn’t.
This much is for sure though: The changes in Iraq are much preferred over chaos and uncertainty of the Arab Spring.
And the Arab Spring is almost incomprehensible without the US first freeing Iraq.
Liberals don’t really seem understand that for all the anti-American rhetoric that comes out of places like Egypt, Tehran and Damascus, the US is still understood universally at the standard-bearer of freedom for the rest of the world.
We proved that in Iraq. Again.
DoctorRoy wrote: There was no questioning of Bush or his policies by either the columnists or the Townies. And I mean absolutely none. - Obama’s Rat Madness
Dear Comrade Doctor,
I’m disappointed. I thought you were an idiot, but not a liar.
I was wrong.
Look, there are literally hundreds of these types of columns critical of Bush while he was president. I’m not going to pull more than one because you wrote: “And I mean absolutely none."
But here’s Michelle Malkin November 16, 2005:
Things are going from bad to worse at the Bush Department of Homeland Security.
Do not be fooled by DHS chief Michael Chertoff's tough-sounding rhetoric. While the Washington muckety-mucks pay lip service to reforming the nation's broken detention and deportation system, catch-and-release of immigration lawbreakers remains the order of the day -- not only at the border, but all across the country's interior.
The rudderless and overwhelmed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency still does not have a new chief. Which is just as well since Bush nominee Julie Myers (a nice Bush lawyer with virtually no immigration or customs enforcement experience who happens to be the niece of recently retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers/wife of Chertoff's chief of staff/former employee of Chertoff and former colleague of outgoing ICE head Michael Garcia) would provide as much leadership and morale-boosting ability as a pair of junior high pom-poms. Her nomination is still pending.
Meanwhile, as illegal immigration continues unabated, the White House has seen fit to honor the chief of the Border Patrol, David Aguilar, with a presidential "Meritorious Executive" award, which comes with a cash bonus, for his outstanding performance. I kid you not
Comrade Doctor, if you’re going to complain about conservatives, please do it on a factual basis.
gmallast wrote: Mr. Ransom is right, of course. But he is getting shrill. He is getting almost as sarcastic as I am. -The Big O Goes for the Big Zero Again
Dear Comrade G,
Oh I am, am I?
Supercarp wrote: If asteroids "want to destroy the middle class and women," then asteroids must be Republican. Truthfully, I think most Republicans would be happy with that. - Asteroids Want to Destroy the Middle Class- and Women
Dear Supercarp,
That’s the equivalent of “Asteroids are all Bush’s fault.”
If you think that Republicans have a secret plan to destroy the middle class and women, then you need more medication than Nixon took. Or Obama. Combined.
BFDOFR wrote: John, this is not the first column of yours that I've read that is full of extraneous words and other minor errors that should have been caught by a good editor. I agree with almost all of your opinions and I like your snarky style and ability to skewer the buffoons on the other side. But, if you don't get a good editor soon, these minor errors are going to mount enough for me to have to stop reading you. Please. - Asteroids Want to Destroy the Middle Class- and Women
Dear BFDOFR,
You do know that BFDOFR isn’t a real word, right?
Future complaints can be directed to our new associate editor Michael Schaus at Michael.Schaus@salem.cc.
That's it for this week.
V/r,
JR