Just Words, For Now

And while provocative signage at protest rallies is nothing new, I'm starting to think that signs like this are a signifier of something much more severe to come.



No one can deny that these people are completely and utterly ill-informed when it comes to not only healthcare, but a variety of issues that they didn't seem to have a problem with prior to Barack Obama's election. The bile that seeps from every orifice of a Tea Bagger isn't something to take lightly. Someone is going to get hurt, or worse, before this is over.

Someone Needs Some Learning

A recent highlighted article over at Fox"Nation" ( that bastion of good will, American spirit, acceptance ) asks the question - "what have the tea-parties learned this year"?

I would ask the same question.

For starters, they have likely learned that spell-checking their picket-signs is probably a good idea. They learned that gathering people together in Washington and around the country is a lot easier if you have an astoturfing organization bus you in. I would like to think that they learned that the 9/12 march on DC really didn't grow to the alleged 1.2 million people that Glenn Beck claimed it did. And more than that, I would hope they learned that Beck isn't much of a tea-party leader as he literally "phoned-it-in" from the studio on that day - he didn't even bother to show up.

Then again, I'm guessing that they didn't even learn that. Come to think of it, the tea-baggers really don't "learn" anything, they simply accept what they are being told as gospel truth. That's what it means to be a tea-bagger - to blindly follow every statement no matter how preposterous, how ridiculous, nor how conspiratorial. Learning seems to be something that is beyond their capacity, and that is unfortunate.

So what have learned from the tea-baggers this year? Aside from the fact that they are mere sheep, we have gleaned a wealth of knowledge regarding the power of conservative media and what it does to the national conversation. It does, without equivocation, destroy the very ability for many to exercise any form of intelligent conversation. "The Mob" as they like to refer to themselves, are being controlled, molested, and contorted into creatures of reflex, not reflection. And we will continue to learn from them and hope that one day they will be able to learn for themselves.

Some Thoughts For Your Morning

- And the teabaggers are set to beseige DC once again. Over the last 48 hours, Michelle Bachman has rallied her ill-informed, mouth-agape, masses into another twitching later over healthcare reform. It makes one wonder how exactly these people are able to just pack-up and run to Washington each and every time Congress has a sit-down. It has been postulated that some, perhaps many, are unemployed and that their blathering fist-pumping is somewhat hypocritical as they are using public unemployment benefits. But moreover, it's a fair assumption that some are also drawing Social Security and Medicare benefits, another example of the Socialist structure that they claim to rage against. It would be an interesting set of polling data that someone really needs to examine.

- While conservatives continue their diefication of Ayn Rand, one has to wonder why these people would rally behind a person that was a avowed athiest. And not only that, but these same people that wave copies of Atlas Shrugged in the air everytime Glenn Beck cries on television have no real sense of the "going Galt" meme that they threaten to perpetrate. The very idea behind it means that society will faulter if they simply quit their jobs, quit using the skills that they have cultivated over their lives. The question is this - what do any of these reactionary conservatives truly have to offer this country? Will America really be reduced to a Dark Ages landscape if Michelle Malkin, Ed Morrissey, Mary Katherine Ham, and Glenn Beck just disappear?

- Are conservatives really going to gain anything by winning the three elections they have continually ranted about with drooling anticipation? And while some are preparing for both the worst and the best by placing themselves outside the equation and "spinning the spin that hasn't even been spun" once the last vote is cast today, the bottom line is that today isn't a referendum on Obama, it's the continued manifestation of the GOP's identity crisis. I'm looking for Hoffman to lose and the conservative movement to make him into some martyr for the teabaggers.

Wonder When Glenn Beck Is Going To Have Him On

Chris Matthews had on William Kostric - the man with the Jefferson quote and gun at the townhall meeting given by President Obama - to answer some question, most notably what his message or intent was.

Matthews was visibly upset.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

You'll notice toward the end of the segment ( approx. 6:25 ) that Kostric is holding what appears to be a script. Now, whether or not he was given the questions ahead of time - which I highly doubt - or those are his talking points given to him by either his lawyer or associate is unclear. But, what is readily apparent is that he is unrepentant for his questionable actions and appears to be more in-line with this laughable notion that our nation is on the very brink of destruction unless government is completely dismantled and people everywhere start carrying guns with them everywhere they go.

Paging Janet Napolitano

Yeah, this is such a good idea.

A peaceful demonstration of at least a million — hey, if we can 10 million, even better — but at least one million armed militia men marching on Washington. A peaceful demonstration. No shooting, no one gets hurt. Just a demonstration. The only difference from any typical demonstration is we will all be armed.

David Neiwert @ Crooks and Liars takes a look at this issue from the perspective of the "we're all gonna DIE!!!" prophecies of Glenn Beck.

Something that should be pointed out, and something that many of you probably already are thinking once you see this video, is that it is within these militia groups that your Right-Wing extremism is starting to come to a boil.

No one is saying that they shouldn't be allowed to protest, but they are wanting to do it AND be armed. One million people in the streets of DC with guns. That's more than our own Marine Corp force times 5. I agree with Neiwert, good luck getting a permit for that.

Photo Of The Day

While watching many of the "tea-bagging" eventsy yesterday, I noticed something straightaway - an absence of diversity. To put it another, more coloquial way, it was mainly just a bunch of angry, white people.

( h/t: Cesca @ The Goddamn Awesome Blog! )

A Plurality Of Ignorance: Teabaggers Think They Know It All

*cross posted at Daily Kos *

Michelle Malkin, and many other bloggers, have extensively covered the "tea-parties".

Malkin, in her latest piece, makes this statement:

no national wire coverage of these thousands of protesters across the country, but AP covers measly anti-war protest turnout in Washington…

That's a bit like asking someone who you've publicly ridiculed numerous times to pay attention to you and give you some type of priority coverage.

Oh, wait. That's EXACTLY what that is.

Malkin's new bit of "please-feel-sorry-for-us" nonsense aside, one has to ask the question - do any of these people that are attending and praising the "sucess" of their tea-parties know anything about economics?

First, you have to look at where these people are getting their information.

Rush Limbaugh, the aforementioned Michelle Malkin, andb blogs such as FreeRepublic, RedState, and HotAir.

So, what is the one thing that none of these people are giving their audience - an alternative, economic, plan.

Rush does offer somewhat of a plan, though it is filled with information that is either false or has been proven to not work:

I say, cut the U.S. corporate tax rate -- at 35%, among the highest of all industrialized nations -- in half.

Limbaugh's getting his "facts" on the corporate tax rate wrong.

From Media Matters

In its August 2008 report, the GAO estimated that "[t]he average U.S. effective tax rate on the domestic income of large corporations with positive domestic income in 2004 was an estimated 25.2 percent." Further, in its Paying Taxes 2009 publication, based on its 2009 Doing Business report, the World Bank-International Finance Corporation estimated that the United States has a lower effective rate of current corporate tax than several developed economies, including Germany and Italy. Moreover, in June 2007, the Treasury Department concluded: "If special provisions were eliminated, the top corporate tax rate could be lowered to 27 percent or more than 40 percent expensing could be provided to all businesses for new the cost of tangible investments, and the tax system would produce the same level of revenue."

In Paying Taxes 2009: The Global Picture, the World Bank noted that "reducing the statutory rate of corporate income tax has been the most popular government tax reform in the period. However in most of the economies, the case study company does not pay corporate income tax at the statutory rate on its profit before tax, since the tax rules require adjustments to be made to this in order to calculate taxable profits."

DeocracyNow's Amy Goodman interviews Pulizter Prize winning investigative Journalist David Cy Johnston about the stimulus and specifically references further tax-breaks for corporations

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON:....spending—tax cuts have not worked. The Bush tax cuts, all of them were financed with borrowed money. And where did we end up at the end of the Bush administration? If you add up all of the bailouts that the Bush administration did in the fall, the investments, the spending and the guarantees, it’s over $8 trillion. How much money is that? It is more than all of the income taxes paid by all Americans for the entire eight years of the Bush administration.


The fact is that if you don’t fix and maintain roads, you can’t move goods around efficiently, the economy suffers. If you don’t spend money on higher education, on research and development, the economy suffers. This notion that government money is, as a student once said to me, taken out in the ocean and just dumped has to go away. We need to recognize that government, which is the biggest single part of our economy, is absolutely vital, if we’re going have a robust economy. That doesn’t mean there isn’t waste and stupidity. And corporate America has plenty of waste and stupidity, too.

Rush then goes on to state:

Suspend the capital gains tax for a year to incentivize new investment, after which it would be reimposed at 10%.

But who pays Capital Gains taxes?

Fewer than one in seven individual taxpayers report taxable capital gains in any year. In 2006 just 13.4 million out of 138.3 million taxpayers reported taxable net gains (net long-term gains in excess of net short-term capital losses and capital gains distributions, which are taxed at favorable capital gains rates) on Schedule D, and another 4.6 million reported capital gains distributions from mutual funds on their Forms 1040. Many taxpayers with gains had modest incomes ? more than half (52 percent) of those with taxable net gains or capital gains distributions had incomes below $75,000. But high-income taxpayers accounted for the overwhelming share of capital gains (Table 1). The 3 percent of tax returns with adjusted gross income exceeding $200,000 reported 31 percent of AGI and 83 percent of capital gains. The 0.3 percent of returns with AGI exceeding $1 million reported 15 percent of AGI and 61 percent of capital gains. Capital gains represented less than 4 percent of AGI for gains recipients with income less than $200,000, but about 40 percent of AGI for those with income exceeding $1 million.

Many more Americans accrue capital gains on corporate shares they hold within tax-deferred employersponsored retirement saving plans or individual retirement accounts. But capital gains from stock sales within those accounts are not subject to capital gains tax. Accruals within those accounts are tax free until distributed and then are taxed as ordinary income.

Newt Gingrich had the same idea for Capital Gains. Turns out Rush is just as wrong about the idea as Newt was:

Here are a few examples of why Newt and Rush's plans for Capital Gains won't work.

Capital Gains Cuts Mostly Benefit The Wealthy:

If you care about who benefits from tax cuts, and don’t think it should mainly be the rich, and in particular if right now you’re not so crazy about cutting taxes on the people on Wall Street who are responsible for getting the country into the huge financial mess it’s in, this probably isn’t your favorite tax change. The benefits of capital gains tax cuts overwhelmingly go to those who own capital assets outside of retirement and other tax-protected accounts. By definition it is the rich who own most capital assets.

The Incentive Will Be To Sell:

A 0% capital gains rate would in fact be a disaster for the market. One virtue of having a tax on capital gains is that it dampens volatility and promotes longer-term investing. That is, if you pay tax on profitable trades, you’re less likely to make moves based on short term movements on the market. Given the uncertain times we face, it’s far more likely that a zero rate on capital gains would prompt a massive exodus from the market than a massive entry into it. In fact, if you think about it, the immediate motivation of a 0% capital gains tax rate is to sell - not buy.

There Will Be No Incentive To Save:

We worry all the time about insufficient savings in this country for retirement and education. One of the ways in which we encourage saving is to create no-tax retirement and education accounts. If all accounts are no-tax, money will likely not be put into these forms, which it’s much harder to pull out of.

That's the meat of Limbaugh's plan - a plan that won't work.

The remainder of those touting the tea-parties have nothing real to offer to the discussion. It's all "red-meat" prattling that amounts to nothing more than delusional speculation.

Malkin has all sorts of paranoid theories about the stimulus.

She went on Cavuto's "business" program on Fox"News" to discuss her theory that Robert Reich was advocating that stimulus money be kept away from experienced workers and "white-male" construction workers.



Reich even responded.

In a time like this, when tempers are riding high and many Americans are close to panic about their jobs and finances, you have a special responsibility to consider the accuracy of what you say and the consequences of inflammatory and erroneous statements. In the last few days, manifestly distorting my words and pulling them out of context, you have accused me of wanting to exclude white males from jobs generated by the stimulus package. Anyone who takes a moment to examine what I actually said and wrote knows this to be an absurd misrepresentation of my position (see this). My goal is and has always been to create as many opportunities for as wide a group as possible, and not exclude anyone from access. There is and has never been any ambiguity about this. The hate mail I have received since your broadcast suggests that the mischievous consequences of your demagoguery are potentially dangerous, in addition to being destructive of rational and constructive political discourse. I urge you to take responsibility for your words. Words and ideas have real world consequences, and you have demonstrated a cavalier disregard for both.

People like Malkin, Limbaugh, conservative bloggers ( et al ) refuse to listen to anyone with any type of economic background.

Perhaps it's because it's too difficult for them to understand?

I'm guessing yes on that one.

It's far easier to digest and then vomit up neatly packaged "sound-bites". Couple that with buzz-words like "socialism" and "communism" and even "totalitarianism" and you'll have a crowd of people ready and willing to follow you. And they will follow you out of fear, even if it is a fear that is grounded in lies.

And what of those that attend the "te-parties".

What knowledge of the economy do they have?

It's a fairly safe bet that some of them may have some knowledge of economics, but are they attending these rallies out of anything more than a reflexive fear that Obama and the government are "out to get them"?





Nothing but catch-phrases.

Then there are the governors of states that are lambasting the stimulus. Then they turn around and say they will only accept certain portions. Sarah Palin is part of this gang.

The biggest single chunk of stimulus money that Palin is turning down is $160 million for education. There’s also $17 million in Department of Labor funds (vocational rehabilitation services, unemployment services, etc.), about $9 million for Health and Social Services and about $7 million for Public Safety.

Then there's South Carolina Governor Mark Sandford.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.

These three, to me, are examples of Republicans that are showing a complete lack of interest in the people within their own states. Why are they only rejecting those speicific portions of the stimulus. Why aren't the "tea-baggers" asking that question?

People are actually dumping teabags into rivers and think that this act is somehow going to help the economy. Actions do often speak truth to power, but what "truth" are they expressing? Are they buying these tea bags? When people started protesting France, they were actually buying the wine they were pouring into storm drains.

Of course, I don't have all the answers either.

Truth of the matter is, I'm willing to admit that I don't know enough about economics. But I'm willing to learn the truth behind something before simply reacting.

It amazes me how so many people who aren't going to have their taxes raised - whether they are self-employed or not - are so willing to be part of the stimulus in the first place.

Perhaps it's a part of their nature. Maybe they have such a strong desire to be a part of something that they give up the ability to think for themselves. Maybe for them, being part of "the crowd" is more important than being informed.

You Would Think He Would Have A Reason

A McCain / Palin supporter decided he would protest outside an Obama rally.

Seems that it's far easier for Republicans stand around in groups and agree with one another on why Obama is bad. They never have a reason for saying that these things are bad, they just assume that they are and they agree with those assumption.

You'll notice that the lone protester in the video really has no answer, no reasoning, behind what he is saying or doing. He just does it.