Election Aftermath

[DolfanBob]

In the Womans own words "Thats why WE voted for him" Who is the "WE" she is referring to?
Now who's stereotyping? but thats ok because it's them. Couldn't help myself. 

In the character from Happy Gilmore voice. "Jackass!"

[heironymouspasparagus]

Well, if they are that distraught and want to go...then go!  Nobody stopping them.  And if they can't handle the little bit of carp that is coming down the line from having to pay an extra $1500 for every $50,000 of income over $250,000, well then, that's just toooooo bad.  Since I have had to pay on those Bush Abominations - unfunded war and bank/insurance bailouts as well as deal with the extreme adverse consequences of the Bush Tax Cuts for WAY too long.

[guido911]

Well, if they are that distraught and want to go...then go!  Nobody stopping them.  And if they can't handle the little bit of carp that is coming down the line from having to pay an extra $1500 for every $50,000 of income over $250,000, well then, that's just toooooo bad.  Since I have had to pay on those Bush Abominations - unfunded war and bank/insurance bailouts as well as deal with the extreme adverse consequences of the Bush Tax Cuts for WAY too long.

How about that little (okay a lot) that they already pay PLUS the new stuff. Or does that not count. And everyone--not just you--paid for those unfunded wars and bailouts. blah blah blah. Here's a thought, have you ever written the IRS a check for over six figures before. If you haven't paid one year's worth of taxes that an evil 1-2% pays every year--just once, how's about shutting that noise hole under your nose.   Maybe say "thanks" to those that have done more financially to support this country than you. Or not. Watch those evil richers stop making charitable donations, or investing income, or working less (no sense in making more money if its being confiscated), or not hiring anyone...

I would guess there are many in this forum who would be PISSED if they paid over 10K. There are probably others that over a period of years wouldn't pay that to the feds. How come those are the folks screaming the loudest for others to pay more?

[guido911]

I remember quite a few things from four years ago.... your despicable stereotypes about people you know diddly-squat about... and...

Looks like your peeps in that video got to ya.

[Townsend]

How about that little (okay a lot) that they already pay PLUS the new stuff. Or does that not count. And everyone--not just you--paid for those unfunded wars and bailouts. blah blah blah. Here's a thought, have you ever written the IRS a check for over six figures before. If you haven't paid one year's worth of taxes that an evil 1-2% pays every year--just once, how's about shutting that noise hole under your nose.   Maybe say "thanks" to those that have done more financially to support this country than you. Or not. Watch those evil richers stop making charitable donations, or investing income, or working less (no sense in making more money if its being confiscated), or not hiring anyone...

I would guess there are many in this forum who would be PISSED if they paid over 10K. There are probably others that over a period of years wouldn't pay that to the feds. How come those are the folks screaming the loudest for others to pay more?

Many of us pay more than that.  Most of us have the couth not to bring things like that up in a boastful way.  Sometimes your posts can be off putting.

Maybe say "thanks" to those that have done more financially to support this country than you.

That's a pretty A-hole comment.

[heironymouspasparagus]

How about that little (okay a lot) that they already pay PLUS the new stuff. Or does that not count. And everyone--not just you--paid for those unfunded wars and bailouts. blah blah blah. Here's a thought, have you ever written the IRS a check for over six figures before. If you haven't paid one year's worth of taxes that an evil 1-2% pays every year--just once, how's about shutting that noise hole under your nose.   Maybe say "thanks" to those that have done more financially to support this country than you. Or not. Watch those evil richers stop making charitable donations, or investing income, or working less (no sense in making more money if its being confiscated), or not hiring anyone...

I would guess there are many in this forum who would be PISSED if they paid over 10K. There are probably others that over a period of years wouldn't pay that to the feds. How come those are the folks screaming the loudest for others to pay more?

It is definitely not a lot extra.  For you, the extra $750,000 over the first $250,000 is gonna cost you about $1500 per 50k.  Or $22,500 more on the total $1 million.  You have had an aberration for over 10 years of getting to keep that - based on the pre-Baby Bush rates, so you have had the benefit of not just an extra $225,000, but the added investment income from that tax honey-hole you have been enjoying for so long.   Oh, and by the way - Sweet!! that you make so much - I am envious and hope to join you soon in that rarified atmosphere you inhale every day!!!

For me, it's gonna be about an extra $1.50, so proportionately, I am getting hit just as bad as you.

While your kids/grandkids lives are being massively affected - adversely - way into the future by all the debt that has racked up.

Oh, please...being confiscated??  Geez...you are as melodramatic as as little girl sometimes!  It's going back to what it was before Baby Bush's BS (BBBS).  And that was still lower than ALL the history of the nonsense we call income tax....

or not hiring anyone....you mean like they haven't been doing so for what, about the last 4+ years.  That is so far beyond lame as well as just a flat out lie - I can't believe even you keep trotting that one out.  What's next - all those "small businesses" are just gonna fold up and die?  I know for a fact that won't stop you.  It won't stop me.  It won't stop ANY of the couple dozen acquaintances I have who also own/operate small businesses.  And you also won't stop investing, either, so don't even try to convince anyone of that nonsense.

As for being pissed, yeah, I was pissed the first year I had to pay more than $10 - and that was a LONG time ago.  And yes, I am pissed that I have to pay way beyond $10k now.  I feel the personal income tax is an abomination.  It is unconstitutional.  It is also a reality in our world, so I just deal with it.  And rant every chance I get to get rid of it and go to  a system where all tax 'collections' are handled through companies - they have the infrastructure in place (either internal or external), they pass it through anyway, and it reduces a massive, ridiculous, obscene government bureaucracy (IRS) by a dramatic amount.  Only have to interface with a few million entities instead of hundreds of millions, so it don't need to be near as big.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Many of us pay more than that.  Most of us have the couth not to bring things like that up in a boastful way.  Sometimes your posts can be off putting.
  That's a pretty A-hole comment.

I like it when he does that...it's such an easy target.


As for his comment about "screaming the loudest" - well, I guess Buffet and Bogle and Gates are just chopped liver...?  They have all called for higher taxes, since they recognize the inequity and also wish to have it eliminated.

[guido911]

Many of us pay more than that.  Most of us have the couth not to bring things like that up in a boastful way.  Sometimes your posts can be off putting.
  That's a pretty A-hole comment.

I have had it with the damned class warfare around here T. People with little or no skin in the game need to STHU instead of complaining about others that do foot the bill. I worked damned hard and sacrificed plenty to get where I am. My wife even more so. And several folks in here have done the same thing. I see those that demand even more from those that give much already, and receive little or nothing in return, as simple jealousy. 

As for being boastful, I DO NOT see how not wanting to give more money to the government, instead of me using what is mine, to be boastful. To me, your point rings more of envy (not you necessarily being envious). It sickens me to see people just willy nilly exclaim that "too bad" if some of those richers have to kick in another $1500 per $50K. Easy for heiron to say since its not his money he's talking about taking away and then telling those you are paying to suck it up. That's the a-hole comment.

And you should know better than to come after me on this. I've done my damnest to help out those in need in this town--where I am not even originally from--with ZERO expectation of anything in return. Just don't tell me that its no BFD for me to cough up more to the govt. simply because I supposedly can.

[guido911]

I like it when he does that...it's such an easy target.


As for his comment about "screaming the loudest" - well, I guess Buffet and Bogle and Gates are just chopped liver...?  They have all called for higher taxes, since they recognize the inequity and also wish to have it eliminated.

I do not give a damn what those three people call for when it comes to tax policy. However, I more inclined to at least listen to them since they got skin in the game. And, who knows how they would feel if they weren't already freakin billionaires and looking at tax policy through those eyes. They may have thought differently if they were like me or any other regular person.

[heironymouspasparagus]

As for being boastful, I DO NOT see how not wanting to give more money to the government, instead of me using what is mine, to be boastful. To me, your point rings more of envy (not you necessarily being envious). It sickens me to see people just willy nilly exclaim that "too bad" if some of those richers have to kick in another $1500 per $50K. Easy for heiron to say since its not his money he's talking about taking away and then telling those you are paying to suck it up. That's the a-hole comment.

Yeah, it IS my money I'm talking about, too.  Not the million dollar version, but certainly much more than I want to pay, and more than enough to feel it sting.  And yeah, you do have to just suck it up.  It's what HAS to happen or this whole economic environment is gonna collapse like the house of cards it is.  I would much rather it not happen just yet....

And if the version Obama is talking about does NOT happen, then the "cliff" version will, which will mean even MORE that you get to pay, because then the Republicontins would have made it so the rates on the amount LESS than $250k would also go back, so there is that extra bit you get to add on....insult to injury as far as I am concerned...probably what...??  Another $6,000 or 7,000 on top of the extra above 250.  Ask your accountant to get the exact numbers.

Either way, taxes have to go up because of the drunken unfunded spending and tax cut orgy we have been on for 12 years.  It was stupid to start with in 2001 and it becomes even worse with every day that passes.  So, get your "big girl" panties on, cause ain't no one in office today gonna do the right thing anytime soon...certainly not in my lifetime, and probably not in yours, either!

[Teatownclown]

Maureen's boss!

A Lost Civilization

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: December 8, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/opinion/sunday/dowd-a-lost-civilization.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121209

MY college roommates and I used to grocery shop and cook together. The only food we seemed to agree on was corn, so we ate a lot of corn.

My mom would periodically call to warn me in a dire tone, "Do you know why the Incas are extinct?"

Her maize hazing left me with a deeply ingrained fear of being part of a civilization that was obliviously engaging in behavior that would lead to its extinction.

Too bad the Republican Party didn't have my mom to keep it on its toes. Then it might not have gone all Apocalypto on us — becoming the first civilization in modern history to spiral the way of the Incas, Aztecs and Mayans.

The Mayans were right, as it turns out, when they predicted the world would end in 2012. It was just a select world: the G.O.P. universe of arrogant, uptight, entitled, bossy, retrogressive white guys.

Just another vanishing tribe that fought the cultural and demographic tides of history.

Someday, it will be the subject of a National Geographic special, or a Mel Gibson movie, where archaeologists piece together who the lost tribe was, where it came from, and what happened to it. The experts will sift through the ruins of the Reagan Presidential Library, Dick Cheney's shotgun casings, Orca poll monitoring hieroglyphics, remnants of triumphal rants by Dick Morris on Fox News, faded photos of Clint Eastwood and an empty chair, and scraps of ancient tape in which a tall, stiff man, his name long forgotten, gnashes his teeth about the 47 percent of moochers and the "gifts" they got.

Instead of smallpox, plagues, drought and Conquistadors, the Republican decline will be traced to a stubborn refusal to adapt to a world where poor people and sick people and black people and brown people and female people and gay people count.

As the historian Will Durant observed, "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."

President Obama's victory margin is expanding, as more votes are counted. He didn't just beat Romney; he's still beating him. But another sign of the old guard's denial came on Friday, a month after the election, when the Romney campaign ebulliently announced that it raised $85.9 million in the final weeks of the campaign, making its fund-raising effort "the most successful in Republican Party history."

Why is the Romney campaign still boasting? You can't celebrate at a funeral. Go away and learn how to crunch data on the Internet.

Outside the Republican walled kingdom of denial and delusion, everyone else could see that the once clever and ruthless party was behaving in an obtuse and outmoded way that spelled doom.

The G.O.P. put up a candidate that no one liked or understood and ran a campaign that no one liked or understood — a campaign animated by the idea that indolent, grasping serfs must be kept down, even if it meant creating barriers to letting them vote.

Although Stuart Stevens, the Romney strategist, now claims that Mitt "captured the imagination of millions" and ran "with a natural grace," there was very little chance that the awkward gazillionaire was ever going to be president. Yet strangely, Republicans are still gobsmacked by their loss, grasping at straws like Sandy as an excuse.

Some G.O.P. House members continue to try to wrestle the president over the fiscal cliff. Romney wanders in a daze, his hair not perfectly gelled. And his campaign advisers continue to express astonishment that a disastrous campaign, convention and candidate, as well as a lack of familiarity with what Stevens dismissively calls "whiz-bang turnout technologies," could possibly lead to defeat.

Who would ever have thought blacks would get out and support the first black president? Who would ever have thought women would shy away from the party of transvaginal probes? Who would ever have thought gays would work against a party that treated them as immoral and subhuman? Who would have ever thought young people would desert a party that ignored science and hectored on social issues? Who would ever have thought Latinos would scorn a party that expected them to finish up their chores and self-deport?

Republicans know they're in trouble when W. emerges as the moral voice of the party. The former president lectured the G.O.P. on Tuesday about being more "benevolent" toward immigrants.

As Eva Longoria supersedes Karl Rove as a power player, Republicans act as shellshocked as the Southern gentry overrun by Yankee carpetbaggers in "Gone with the Wind." As the movie eulogized: "Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind."

Gun sales have burgeoned since the president's re-election, with Black Friday weapons purchases setting records as the dead-enders rush to arm themselves.

But history will no doubt record that withering Republicans were finally wiped from the earth in 2016 when the relentless (and rested) Conquistadora Hillary marched in, General Bill on a horse behind her, and finished them off.

"it's all over now, but I used to love her....."

[heironymouspasparagus]

I do not give a damn what those three people call for when it comes to tax policy. However, I more inclined to at least listen to them since they got skin in the game. And, who knows how they would feel if they weren't already freakin billionaires and looking at tax policy through those eyes. They may have thought differently if they were like me or any other regular person.

But the only "regular" person on tax policy in your mind is you.  Which is way off the curve of "regular"...regular is making, as an annual income, a whole lot less than you pay in taxes...by half or more.  In fact, half of the people (47%) in the country have income below what you have said private school costs you every year....just for some perspective.

So, since Buffet is out.  The lower 98% is out since they don't pay anywhere near as much as you.  And you are out because you are way out of the mainstream.  That leaves no one to make tax policy, so I guess reverting back to pre-Baby Bush BS is the only way to go. 

And in spite of your continued dependency on proven false FoxFaxts, everybody in this country has some "skin in the game".  While there are tiny little adjustments due to child and earned income credits, there is NO refund to the 47% who pay taxes - income taxes - passed through corporations - on all the goods and services they buy/consume every year - if they are so unlucky as to have purchased those goods and services from a corporation that actually pays income tax....

As for "feelings" - well, I have stated many times that I would hate it to happen, but if the pre-Bush rates go up, then so be it.  Even though we have been subsidizing the richest since Bush, it is much more important to get some fiscal order in our economy.

[guido911]

Even though we have been subsidizing the richest since Bush, it is much more important to get some fiscal order in our economy.

I will never understand how people who pay thousands or millions less in taxes than those "rich" have the gall to say since those rich people paid a little less for some time they were being subsidized. It takes a special breed of "have not" to conjure up that kind of thought.

[heironymouspasparagus]

I will never understand how people who pay thousands or millions less in taxes than those "rich" have the gall to say since those rich people paid a little less for some time they were being subsidized. It takes a special breed of "have not" to conjure up that kind of thought.

Or the understanding of math and how small to medium numbers add up to the bonus' and benefits and tax breaks the remaining 1% have gotten voted for themselves...it's the class warfare the top 1% have been waging on the rest of the population since 2001.  It is the "corporate welfare" mentality that they really shouldn't have to pay proportionate taxes, since they are so special.  It is the redistribution of wealth that has occurred for a long, long time and now even many of the direct beneficiaries have become so embarrassed by the inequity that they are starting to admit how wrong it has been.

[Townsend]

Report: Ann Romney passes on 'Dancing with the Stars'

http://www.usatoday.com/story/onpolitics/2013/01/14/ann-romney-dancing-with-stars/1833917/

Ann Romney doing the cha-cha and quick step for the Disco Ball trophy? Alas, the wife of GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney reportedly won't be competing on Dancing with the Stars.

TMZ, the gossip website, reports Ann Romney was approached about joining the ABC competition show after Mitt Romney was defeated by President Obama. Ann Romney proclaimed herself a "huge fan" of DWTS after being spotted at last season's finale with a daughter-in-law and granddaughter.

An unnamed Romney spokesperson told TMZ that Romney "was approached, but she declined."

Ann Romney was her husband's not-so-secret weapon in the 2012 presidential campaign, often doing solo campaign appearances and interviews where she helped humanize the former Massachusetts governor.She had her own star turn as a prime-time speaker at the Republican National Convention last summer, plus appeared as a guest host on ABC's Good Morning America in the final weeks of the campaign.