The House Pugs are already as unsatable as a three-legged stool.

OTOH, BONER’s remark was one of the more coherent utterings from that crowd during this “crisis.”

Ah, the vaunted right-wing “civility.” Gotta love it.

Um, … oh never mind.

Alan, I’ll quit using metaphors and check my spelling from now on, okay? My bad. I get excited when there is news I can understand coming from the House.

It’s all well and good that the GOP squabbling may keep them busy but that doesn’t resolve our problem with the Democrats.

Basically, people got screwed by the Democrats, not the GOP. The President undercut the Democrats in the Senate and basically GAVE Mitch McConnell control of the debate on tax increases(he did it right before a new Congress would have convened that would have passed filibuster rules that would have limited GOP obstruction.) He then got the minority party to go along, with Pelosi’s help, passing what the GOP Senate wanted in the House.

In 2 months time we’re going to be screwed if someone can’t figure out how to screw Pelosi and Reid up. They’re a bigger concern than Boehner IMO.

:-)

Actually, I liked your typo. Seems appropriate to use “unsatable” for these idiots.

In other news, a Kardashian is pregnant or something.

Oh, and Snooki.

What? You aren’t interested in checking out the little lace maternity dress Kim bought?

I’m so happy we’re going to be screwed by the blue jersey team instead of those inept red jersey guys. Go team pragmatic blue!

What you said… quite agree.

So Boner used the F-bomb?

Big deal.

Barry Zero F-bombed the 99%. That’s the real news.

And he’s going to pin it all on the mean ol’ Republicans who are conveniently too busy infighting to care much.

Poor poor Barack ,THEY are going to FORCE him to cut Social Security and raise the age of Medicare, despite the fact that they are in such disarray.

The big ripoff was not whether the cut off was 250k or 400k (my take was it should have been 100k) but the totally screwing the American people got by Wall Street again where cap gains and dividends were only raised from 15% to 20% where if we went off the fiscal curb it would have reverted to regular income rates meaning the top enders would have paid 39.6% on capital gains and dividends with little to hide it which would have resulted in TRILLIONS of additional revenue. Yet lamestream hardly mentions it. All along keeping this little wealth separator was the KEY to averting the fiscal bunny slope. Got to kep Romney and the boys at that under 20% overall rate after all.. All else was window dressing…..

Next up- the Save the Defense Contractor debt ceiling debacle.

The markets were totally reacting to the idea that cap gains would be taxed properly and if we had gone off the curb the repugnuts would have negotiated anything away to keep that from reverting to full rate. Could have gotten it easly to 25-30% with cap off social security earning and cap. gains and dividends COUNTED for SS if the Dems only had a pair. But alas we know that there are no balls in the democratic party. Funny but the first real set might come forward from a pair of women coming in-LIZ WARREN abd TAMMY BALDWIN. Its time the DEMS had a real agenda and pursued it. You know, a democratic wing of the democratic party so to speak. If we don’t it will come to violence in the streets on a wide scale. My take–in 10 years either the Repug party is a footnote in history or we will be living under a dictatorship (more than we are now).

Was shocked Bernie voted for it-probably the exuse will be unemployment extension. Hopefully when the cavalry rides in we start to hold firm.

cwalt-ain’t that the sad truth.

This could have been way worse and my guess is in part 2 it is going to get way worse unless progressives get over this idea that their main opponent is the GOP instead of a President intent on cutting the safety nets under the guise of a Democratic mantle.

Why not a cut-off at $80,000? Four fifths of all American families (240,606,572 American families) live on an annual income less than $80,000.

Here’s what I want to know:
How can the [middleclass] tax cuts extend to families with an annual income of $450,000 when the top 5% of American family incomes actually begins with families with annual incomes of $311,444?

180,454,920 (three fifths of all families) have annual incomes below $50,000. And 6,015,164 of these families are trying to survive on less $11,000. That’s more than one half of all Americans families!

Again, four fifths of all American families live on an annual income less than $80,000.
That’s 240,606,572 American families. Isn’t that a supermajority?

One last absurdity: the top 5% of American family incomes actually begins with families with annual incomes of $311,444! Well below the $450,000 mark in the bill.

I agree, why any arbitrary number at all.

We’ve heard about these being the Bush Tax Cuts For The Rich for 10 years. They should all expire since they were for the rich.

I’ve seen a number of comments on various threads saying “capital gains would have reverted to regular income tax rates” with the expiration of the Bush cuts. It’s not true. Dividends would have done so absent a deal, but capital gains would have reverted to 20%, exactly where they ended up in the deal.

i agree this was the big victory for the plutocrats, especially the estate tax of 40% which is criminal, imo. cap gains also get taxed at about 3.5 percent as well, which is a provision of Obamacare, for people with incomes over 250K. so their effective rate is about 24 percent on cap gains, still not high enough, should be treated as income.

the original income tax rate applied to all gains, income or capital gains and was levied against only 1% of the population, during the robber baron era. not sure when in history cap gains and dividends began to be treated more favorably than earned income. my guess would be during the reign of St. Ronnie.

Reid is not the problem, it’s Pelosi and Obama. Reid is the only one in the group who knows how to conduct a negotiation. The others can’t wait to get to the microphone and announce their most recent capitulation. When Boehner tells Reid to “go fuck yourself”, well Boehner has just identified for us the guy who is actually being effective.

“Reid figured Democrats could get a more favorable agreement if they waited. When Reid saw an offer that Obama had considered pitching to McConnell on Sunday, which included provisions opposed by Senate Democrats, the majority leader crumpled up the document and tossed it into the burning fireplace of his Capitol office.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/the-fiscal-cliff-deal-that-almost-wasnt-85663_Page2.html#ixzz2GptFNKSU

Not quite:

From 1913 to 1921, capital gains were taxed at ordinary rates. In 1921 the Revenue Act of 1921 was introduced, allowing a tax rate of 12.5 percent gain for assets held at least two years.

IN all honesty, I think you are all giving both sides, D and R, and Obama, way too much credit. Appears to me nobody actually had a strategy. Just one big fustercluck. Everybody seem unhappy. Albeit, that usually means good things for us commoners.

So fare ALL my teams have won in the bowlgames. If Boehner got booted out that would make this the greatest New Year’s EVER.

Yes, as spineless & ineffective as Reid can be, he has stood up for the 99% waaay more than Pelosi or Obama has. Sad to say cuz Reid ain’t no “towering legislator,” but he’s the pick of a very sorry litter at this point in time.

The bigger story IS Pelosi & Obama.

Boner said EFF YOU to Reid bc Reid was, heaven forfend, actually attempting to his job, which – amazingling enough – was trying to work for his constituents in the 99%. Boner couldn’t *believe it* that Reid would have the effrontery to actually – gasp! shriek! – try to help the serfs.

The nerve of Reid!

alan…you are always an endless source of information.

I agree.

I wish I’d said it but Boehner will do.

Huff Po has headline that Reid threw bummer’s offer into the fire. Good for him.

Did he crumple it before or after he brought it to the floor for a vote?

People are fooling themselves if they believe Reid cares about them. He doesn’t. He wants plausible deniability for the Grand Betrayal.

Harry Reid had the ability to tell the President he wasn’t bringing the negotiation to the floor. He didn’t. He brought it to the floor and then played the wring your hands like you are helpless ploy. It’s a game.

a little lesson in engineering. 3 points define a plane and a 3 legged stool is never unstable becase the ends of the leggs are always in the same plane. A stool with more than 3 leggs can be unstable because if the leggs are not all in the same plane (that is the same length) the stool will tilt between planes difined by any 3 legs. Thats why you put a match book under one of the leggs of a wobbly 4 legged stool.

If Republican stools have three legs, I’d highly recommend a bottle of stool softener. It’s probably why they’re always so cranky. Maybe that’s why the Orange Man is always crying.

One has to wonder whether adult beverages were involved.

I gave the benefit of the doubt to the analogy and decided the 3 legs of a Rep stool emanate from the base and are focused like a laser on a single point, whereas Dem stool legs go off in any random direction and wobble around all the time.

I’d sure like to think so.

Sometimes I almost feel sorry for the asswipe.
..
..
..
Almost.

Next time, I hope he includes his horse in the “greeting”.

Thanks for clarifying that for me. I was initially thinking of another type of “stool” altogether. A brown one. :-)

Yes, Harding (clown prototype for Reagan) lowered the max cap gains to 12.5% in 1921, and lowered the max rate on income the next year. I think you know what happened in the subsequent decade. Cap gains was raised in ’34.

Absolutely.

The traitors in government on both sides of the aisle benefit greatly from the fact that the American electorate refuses to educate itself on the issues that concern the country as adequately as the most rural shepherd or goatherder in the Atlas Mountains or the Carpathians.
We are a nation of idiots, plain and simple. All you have to do to end an argument with most Americans is to introduce some numbers. The other guy will melt like the Evil Witch’s monkeys.

And 6,015,164 of these families are trying to survive on less $11,000. That’s more than one half of all Americans families!

In the mid-1970s the poverty level for a family of four was $10,000, so we really haven’t come far and the Right still doesn’t get that lack of consumption keeps GDP down and families on the verge of bankruptcy.

One thing I think is not being taken into account is that Congress will continue working on the debt to reduce it and they’re planning major tax reform. This ballgame isn’t over. Of course, like baseball it IS moving along at a very very slow pace. But, aside from that stuff does happen now and then.

There is filibuster reform, tax system reform, gun violence, immigration and much more to come.