Don't need to

All the information I need is in The New York Times. I get the misinformation from Fox and from you

You remind me a little of

http://articles.businessinsider.com/201 ... n-huntsman

First is was a birth certificate and now over who called who first.

*yawn*

So, the Labor Department of the Obama Administration is spreading misinformation? Which is it?

Quit beating around the bush, you're gonna snag your skirt.

stebo0728 wrote:

--SNIP--

That conversation is too off-topic.

Have we touched on how they only want tax cuts for the wealthy and not the middle class yet? http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12 ... -cut-bill/

Since you deleted that last response, Isaac, which raised my blood pressure, I'll delete mine too. Back to Howard.

Did anyone hear Howard's interview with "Herman Cain/" . It was an imposter, but it was pretty funny. He was hitting on Robin.

I have it saved in a PM to myself, Bubba. Feel free to send me your bile.

IBCoupe wrote:I have it saved in a PM to myself, Bubba. Feel free to send me your bile.

That's ok. I'm saving my bile for Nala if he returns...

So, the House GOP announced a proposed a $1T spending bill.
http://www.npr.org/2011/12/15/143749789 ... nding-bill

Here's the non-spending stuff they fought for in negotiations and got:
- Roll back President Obama's loosened restrictions on family remittances to Cuba.
- No new energy efficiency standards for light bulbs.
- Labor Department must hold off on raising standards for "black lung" prevention in coal mines.
- No government money for abortions in Washington, D.C. (though, I'm pretty sure that was already the law)
- No needle exchange programs to prevent spread of HIV.

What they fought for and lost:
- Virtually no EPA rules rolled-back.
- Rules for "mountaintop removal" mining remain in place.
- Planned Parenthood retains federal funding.

Republicans, do these guys represent your interests?

SO that payroll tax cut thing.....

I'm glad I'm not the only one paying attention to that!

themadscientist wrote:I'm glad I'm not the only one paying attention to that!

Me too. Maybe 2012 will happen as Dem and Repub views on taxes have now flip flopped. Next the magnetic field of the Earth?

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/21/b ... XZQ.reddit

The cry baby strikes again.

Here is my take on this whole debacle.

Here are the votes for 3630 as it passed in the House.
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2011/roll923.xml

That bill left the House with a one year extension and 179 Democrats voted against it. The text of the House bill is here.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c ... dZS:e36569:

When it came back from the Senate 10 months of that extension were gone. The text of that amendment is here.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?r ... 2BGB6gg:e0:

Now, all of the sudden, those same Democrats who did not support the bill on the way out when it was for 12 months have suddenly seen the light and taken up the mantle as the peoples' champion and want to vote to pass 2 months instead of 12 months, all 186 of them. What happened?
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2011/roll946.xml

Listening to the debate of the motion to go to conference the Democrats kept whining about all the Americans who would not get the $1000 of tax relief. A couple of things are wrong with that. First, they voted against this bill in the house when it was 12 months of relief, but 2 months is suddenly cool? Second, $1000 is for a year, two months is $167.
Additionally, they were trying to accept an inferior bill and speaking as if going to conference was the end of it. Quite to the contrary, when you have a minority leader in Nancy Pelosi and a Senate majority leader in Harry Reid both saying they will not appoint conferees, THAT is the end of it. Who are the obstructionists here?

Now that I have beat up on the Democrats, let's turn to the Republicans. Are the House Republicans fighting for the house-authored bill out of a real desire to help working class Americans? I highly doubt it. I am still digging through the two versions of the bill, but I suspect that neither party is actually fighting over the payroll tax cut, maybe the Keystone pipeline or where the offset for the cut is made. There has to be another issue that the Democrats didn't like in the original House bill that the Democrat-led Senate stripped out or modified in a way that the House Democrats like. This would explain their sudden change of heart AND explain the Republicans' desire to negotiate and possibly get those items restored.

They are both complicit in this game of chicken and it looks like nothing will get done, they both will blame the other and the only people who get hurt are the people. Starting to get old ain't it?

When the Wall Street Journal turns against the GOP you know they are in deep $hit/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... stpop_read

Isn't it wonderful that they are now helping our president win reelection.

Telcoman

All that brilliant insight by TMS, and "Jersey Shore" rolls through like a flock of pigeons on a new statue.

Mike, it really has turned into the theater of the absurd. Both parties are full of mouthbreathing imbeciles, and frankly, I don't much care any more what they do.

As long as we have people like Howie voting, we're stuck with the same old crap. Obstructionists indeed. And yet they point to the Right and cry, "the party of no!"

Think it's time for me to buy a compound outside the city limits, go off the grid, take care of my family and let the rest of the world eat itself, a$$-first.

Good bye Gregg and Happy Holidays

The 99% rules

I don't know. Howie is more productive than Congress in a way.

Unfortunately, his product is asinine partisan babble, but placed against a backdrop of Washington inactivity, reliable people, even if they can only be relied upon for crap, are still an ironic rock of certainty in a choppy sea.

"oh look, it's the idiot beacon, what a relief."

Watching the Republicans on the shallowest of surface fighting for a better tax cut than the Democrats had me all mixed up.

The Democrats have successfully painted this as the Republicans' fault and if the dust settles and a deal is not made by the deadline they will be awarded the albatross. The orange man has put all his chips in on this and I think he only has a pair of twos.

Boehner finally caves in




http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/us/po ... al.html?hp

"House Republicans — who rejected an almost identical deal on Tuesday on the House floor — caved under the political rubble that accumulated over the week, much of it from members of their own party, who worried the blockade would do serious damage to the party brand heading into an election year. The new deal makes minor adjustments to make it easier for small businesses with temporary new caps on the wages that are subject to the tax relief."

Another failure as speaker of the house

And speaking of other failures

“Mitt Romney, estimated to be worth somewhere between $190 million and $250 million, asked whether he would release his tax returns if he becomes the Republican presidential nominee:
“I doubt it,” Mr. Romney said, according to a transcript of the interview provided by NBC News. “I will provide all the financial info, which is an extraordinary pile of documents which show investments and so forth.”
“But you won’t do the tax returns?” asked Chuck Todd, host of “The Daily Rundown.”
“I don’t intend to release the tax returns. I don’t,” Mr. Romney responded.
John McCain couldn't remember how many houses he had, but he released his tax returns. Barack Obama released his. But Mitt Romney really doesn't want us to know exactly how wealthy he is, and most of all, though he's campaigning for a deciding role in what tax rates the rest of us will pay, he doesn't want us to know his. It's no mystery why that might be: Since he's still making millions from his retirement deal with Bain Capital, he's likely paying the low low rate available to hedge fund and private equity managers.
Warren Buffett thinks it's not fair for people like him to pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries. Mitt Romney's concern is just to keep secretaries from knowing how much lower his rate is than theirs when he's asking for their votes.”

The failures just keep on coming.

Telcoman

I wonder how Eric Cantor can slough off his involvement and position himself to take Boehnor's gavel. The Senate Republicans did the orange man like Caesar.



E tu Mitch?

Well they woke up this morning and finally did the right thing for once.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ ... comboPNE_p

And yet the Democrats voted against the bill on the way to the senate for a year's extension. They suddenly liked it when it came back at only two. Either the Democrats did not actually want a year or this was not about the tax extension at all.

themadscientist wrote:And yet the Democrats voted against the bill on the way to the senate for a year's extension. They suddenly liked it when it came back at only two. Either the Democrats did not actually want a year or this was not about the tax extension at all.

It was republican insistence on attaching the pipeline issue to the tax cut bill

One has nothing to do with the other but the republicans were playing politics as usual.

The 99% will have good memories come next November

themadscientist wrote:And yet the Democrats voted against the bill on the way to the senate for a year's extension. They suddenly liked it when it came back at only two. Either the Democrats did not actually want a year or this was not about the tax extension at all.

"The Democrats set a trap and the Republicans walked right into it. By rejecting an ostensibly bipartisan “compromise,” the Republican House was portrayed as obstructionist and, even worse, heartless — willing to raise taxes on the middle class while resolutely opposing any tax increases on the rich.

House Republicans compounded this debacle by begging the Senate to come back and renegotiate the issue, thus entirely conceding the initiative to Majority Leader Harry Reid. But Reid had little incentive to make any concessions. House Republicans would have taken the fall for 160 million shrunken paychecks. Every day the White House would have demanded, in the name of the suffering middle class, that Republicans return from vacation and pass the temporary extension.

Having finally realized they had trapped themselves, House Republicans quickly caved, with help from a fig leaf contrived by Sen. Mitch McConnell."

I just love watching all of them crash and burn

That last post was like, actually factual and concise.
Howie, don't start making sense. I like you the way you are.

themadscientist wrote:That last post was like, actually factual and concise.
Howie, don't start making sense. I like you the way you are.

It was written by a right wing columnist

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... l-retreat/


“What Krauthammer conveniently forgets to mention is that the Re-pubs tied a provision regarding the Keystone Pipeline to the bill. Before they would accept the extension of the tax cut, they tried to force the Executive into making a decision on the massive pipeline project within one month.

Typical heavy-handed, corrupt tactics used by the right-wing Teapartiers.

***holes that they are, they got what they deserved, public scorn and possibly the loss of the election.”

I found it interesting that last night O'Reilly failed to even mention anything in his opening remarks on the republican cave in. I guess Fox thought their viewers wouldn't discover how their party faithful failed the American people.
Oh pardon me that's the fair and balanced channel.

Just in case those who only get their news from Fox that seems to ignore most of the GOP failures.

More coverage on GOP incompetence from right wing press

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB500 ... rticle%3D1

A Wall of Worry?
By ALAN ABELSON |

It's hard to fathom why the Republicans blocked a tax break for 160 million Americans—unless it would mean less spending next year, something our economy surely needs.

“What a nice Christmas present! We're talking about the initial refusal of the rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed freshman Republicans in the House of Representatives to follow the lead of their senior colleagues in the Senate, and their insistence on gifting Barack Obama with a wonderful issue to run on in next year's election.
They did so with a laudable lack of fanfare, by blocking a two-month extension of the payroll-tax cut and enhanced unemployment benefits, along with a delay in slashing Medicare's payments to doctors, all due to expire when this fast-vanishing year does. Their extraordinary gift to the President, they confidently believed, would be seen by the citizenry to be in perfect harmony with the holiday spirit.
In their eagerness to make this incredibly generous gesture, these neophyte representatives somehow lost sight of its cost. Not to themselves, to be sure, but to the average Jane and Joe, who were having a tough enough time making ends meet, and those involuntary jobless unable to land a paycheck for months on end.
Somebody neglected to tell them that failure to stretch out the payroll-tax reduction would mean that 160 million souls, give or take a few million, each would be a thousand bucks out of pocket next year; not continuing benefits for the long-term unemployed would cast adrift without a life preserver an estimated three million people who are currently on the dole.
In their usual uncouth fashion, the Democrats howled and screamed so that even inhabitants of the most remote hamlet nestled in the farther reaches of the Rocky Mountains became aware of this dour prospect.
Not entirely insensitive to the rapidly building hubbub, the Republican congressmen sought at first to distract the populace from focusing on the potential loss of a thousand smackers a year or the fate of the millions of down-on-their-luck folks who had the financial rug pulled out from them. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, for example, attacked Michelle Obama for lecturing "us on eating right, while she has a large posterior herself."
When the supposed amplitude of the First Lady's posterior proved unable to quell the fuss of the possible boost in the payroll tax from 4.2% to 6.2%, the Republicans threw in the towel and agreed grudgingly to change their tune and go along with the lower tax rate and long-term jobless benefits for two months more at least.
The damage, however, had been done, and, to their sorrow, the Republicans learned that no good deed goes unpunished. The voters, having been forced to face the possibility of pocketbook pain smack-dab in the middle of this celebratory season, are not likely to be in any rush to forgive the agent of such discomfort.
For reasons that we can't quite fathom, the GOP seems determined to blow what has the makings of a very good shot at electing one of its own next November. While it's obviously not an exact reincarnation of the Know-Nothing Party that sprang up, created more than a bit of a stir and rather quickly fizzled out in the mid-19th century, it appears intent on becoming a No-Everything Party that accentuates the negative, to the exclusion of anything positive.
That doesn't strike us as a particularly promising path to the White House. It isn't that voters necessarily prefer smiley-face candidates, but they don't cotton much to sourpuss replicas of those Easter Island granite heads. Thumbs down may have been fine for the bloodthirsty crowds in the Roman Coliseum hot to see a defeated gladiator dispatched, but it's a feeble excuse for a presidential campaign platform.
Our point is that the Grand Old Party had better wake up, get its act together, forget about the reflexive "no" and offer solid positive alternatives to policies that incur its ire (gosh knows, there are plenty of them).
Unless it straightens up and flies right, to borrow a phrase from Ross Perot, who has considerable experience in losing races for the presidency, we fearlessly forecast that next year's election may turn out to be something other and a whole lot less pleasing for the Republicans than the walk in the park so many pundits are predicting.”

I think the GOP just gave our president another four years in the white house.
What a nice christmas present.

Telcoman