The General American Politics Thread

[Linkabel]

No but it's better than having an enormous tax increase on EVERY ONE!

 

I wasn't saying that it was better, I was saying that what the GOP was doing was just for show. Plus the tax increase was going to happen over time not right away. And like I said it was political suicide not to pass the deal, which it did:

 

House passes fiscal cliff deal, tamps down GOP revolt:

 

 

The House of Representatives late Tuesday easily approved emergency bipartisan legislation sparing all but a sliver of America’s richest from sharp income tax hikes -- while setting up another “fiscal cliff” confrontation in a matter of weeks.

 

Lawmakers voted 257-167 to send the compromise to President Barack Obama to sign into law. Eighty-five Republicans and 172 Democrats backed the bill, which had sailed through the Senate by a lopsided 89-8 margin shortly after 2 a.m. Opposition comprised 151 Republicans and 16 Democrats.

Republican House Speaker John Boehner voted in favor of the deal, as did House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, his party's failed vice presidential candidate. But Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy voted against it.

 

Obama, speaking from the White House briefing room shortly after the vote, praised lawmakers for coming together to avert a tax increase that “could have sent the economy back into a recession.”

 

“A central premise of my campaign for president was the change the tax code that was too skewed toward the wealthy at the expense of working, middle-class Americans. Tonight, we’ve done that,” the president said.

 

But he signaled that the legislation was “just one step in the broader effort” of getting the nation’s finances in order while boosting growth and job creation.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/senate-house-faces-test-fiscal-cliff-deal-161832950--politics.html

 

Also I have to say that watching C-Span was like watching Episode 1.

[turbojet]

Also I have to say that watching C-Span was like watching Episode 1.

I found this especially, albeit unintentionally, hilarious because a boring bureaucratic process was exactly what Lucas was aiming for.

[Tornado]

I'm curious as to what you mean when you say the tax code being skewed. I ask because I'm not sure for whom the tax code is skewed for in your opinion because I've seen you go on about class warfare and how politicians(mainly democrats) are using jargon resembling it.

 

"Look at this asshole. He is a millionaire and he pays less taxes than you. So let's tax him more on regular income (even though that's not why he pays less taxes as a percentage and thus won't do anything meaningful despite how much bitching and moaning everyone does about it), because he's the bad guy here. I'll make sure to throw around words like 'loophole' and 'tax breaks' without actually using them properly (or without hypocrisy), to further foster the resentment that I need."

Edited January 2, 2013 by Tornado

[Autosaver]

Would increasing the tax percentage still increase the tax actually paid since the breaks/loopholes will have less of an affect?

 

(So say 30% is rate, he pays 15%. Doing the loopholes reduced it by 15%. The rate is increased to 35%. He now pays 20% because of the increased rate.)

 

ihavenoideawhatimtalkingaboutsorry

[Patticus]

Chris Christie (Rep., NJ) is really pissed off at the GOP Congress. Not over the 'fiscal cliff' shit, although that may be an issue too, but over the Sandy aid biz:

 

WASHINGTON – Enraged over Congress' failure to approve disaster relief for victims ofSuperstorm Sandy, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey unloaded Wednesday on House Speaker John A. Boehner and Republican lawmakers in Washington for putting "palace intrigue" ahead of their official responsibilities.

 

Washington politicians "will say whatever they have to say to get through the day," Christie said, adding that, as a governor, he had "actual responsibilities" -- "unlike people in Congress."

 

Christie, a potential 2016 GOP presidential contender, reserved his most blistering words for the Republican House speaker.  He described Boehner, variously, as selfish, duplicitous and gutless for reversing course at the last minute on Tuesday night and refusing to allow a vote on a $60-billion aid package before the current Congress adjourned.

 

 

Christie said that as a result of "the speaker’s irresponsible action," there will be further delay in federal disaster aid to New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and other areas hit by the October storm. He pointed out that it had been 66 days since the storm hit and that areas struck by other hurricanes in recent years had received relief packages in far less time. 

 

However, as outrage continued to pour in from elected officials in the affected area, Boehner agreed to hold a vote Friday to direct needed resources to the National Flood Insurance Program. And on Jan. 15, the first full legislative day of the 113th Congress, the House will consider the remaining supplemental request for the victims of Hurricane Sandy.

 

But that came after Christie dished out his cold outrage on members of his own party. 

 

"Shame on you. Shame on Congress," Christie said at a news conference in Trenton, the state capital. "It's absolutely disgraceful, and I have to tell you, this used to be something that was not political. Disaster relief was something you didn't play games with." But "in this current atmosphere, [it's] a potential piece of bait for the political game.  It is why the American people hate Congress."

 

At another point, he said of Republicans in Congress: "We've got people down there who use the citizens of this country like pawns on a chessboard."

 

 

"My party was responsible for this," Christie said, charging "one set of Republicans was trying to prove something to another set," and that Boehner was trying to "prove something. I hope he accomplished it."

 

Christie, whose disaster-relief-themed efforts to reach across partisan lines to President Obama in the days leading up to the election angered many Republicans, said he did not think that was a factor in Boehner's decision. 

 

But the governor, who delivered the keynote address at last summer's Republican National Convention and has helped raise money in recent years for fellow members of the party, did not rule out retaliating against his enemies in Washington.

 

"We'll see. Primaries are an ugly thing," he said.

 

[For the Record, 1:46 p.m. PST  Jan. 2: This post has been updated to include the House's new plan to vote on Sandy aid.]

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-chris-christie-sandy-aid-congress-20130102,0,4385141.story

 

Looks like he actually really gives a shit about the people affected by Sandy, which is a lot more than can be said of Boehner and McConnell. I really hope Christie enters the Republican Presidential Primaries in 2016, just so he can unleash what is obviously a very highly pressurized can of rage on the rest of his running mates. I don't know whether I'd like him to win the candidacy or presidency, however, as I generally know little about the man, but it'd be great to see him in the running at least. Pow pow ka-pow.

 

 

I'm not really sure what to think about the whole fiscal cliff deal, really. I don't know if Obama could've got a better deal out of the G.O.P., even though it meant kicking the can down the road a bit for some issues, but at least he seems keen on getting a better deal done later on in the year (if my understanding is correct). Also, thank fuck the Farm Bill didn't expire; $7+ for a gallon of milk? Yeahno.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Oh look, a actually decent member of GOP is getting attention. Where the fuck has this person been in the news?

[Tornado]

Chris Christie is too ugly to run for President.

 

:\/

 

Would increasing the tax percentage still increase the tax actually paid since the breaks/loopholes will have less of an affect?

 

(So say 30% is rate, he pays 15%. Doing the loopholes reduced it by 15%. The rate is increased to 35%. He now pays 20% because of the increased rate.)

 

ihavenoideawhatimtalkingaboutsorry

 

When you make money on capital gains, like many wealthy people do, that was taxed at 15% since Bush; and before Bush, Clinton had it set at 20%. That's not a loophole (and such things don't exist, for the record. The only way to get around paying your legal amount of taxes is tax evasion), or a tax break, or any of the kind of shit people like Warren Buffet like to say it is. 15% is the tax rate. And you can't tax it like income because:

1. There is no line that you can draw that would successfully redistribute wealth like a progressive income tax system is supposed to. Capital gains includes retirement funds, profits from selling houses or cars, profit from sales of stock and all sorts of things of that nature. So if the government was to draw a line in the sand of say, a the same 250,000 that they draw for regular income, well... a lot of middle class people's houses are worth more than that, so they would be subject to an increased capital gains tax if they ever sold them. This was ignored on this "compromise," and capital gains tax was raised to around 24% or so (because they raised it 5%, and then there are capital gains increases tacked on from Obamacare).
2. Capital gains is not regular income. That is in fact why they are taxed separately. There are massive risks involved with capital gains, losses are even taken into account when determining how much is taxed; and many times when people refer to how much someone "made" the income isn't even claimed. For example, if my house increased in estimated value by $500,000 since I bought it (like what was happening during the housing bubble that led to this economic mess 5 years ago) and I don't sell it, then I didn't really make the money. But, that wouldn't necessarily stop someone from claiming that I am $500,000 richer; and politicians like to do that all the time when they are claiming that Person Z made X amount of money but only paid Y amount in taxes.

So what happens is someone like Mitt Romney, who would ordinarily pay 35% of his income compared to someone who made 50,000 who would pay 15%, will end up turning in his tax returns and he made the majority of his money on capital gains; so his effective tax rate is much closer to 15% than 35%. On top of that, he offsets losses and makes massive donations to charity (which are hilariously painted as being a bad thing, even though charitable contributions only change your deduction amount rather than act as a tax credit), and his effective tax rate drops down below 15% (I don't remember what the numbers were). Now what the Democrat Party did with this information is compared Romney's effective tax rate with the theoretical tax rate of someone earning around 50,000, and used that to push concepts like "Romney paid less taxes than a White House secretary" or "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMo5pykT4uw?"

 

 

The problem is 4-fold:

1. They usually say "paid less taxes than a secretary" rather than "paid a lower rate than a secretary," which is what that Obama ad above is alluding to directly and are in fact two different things. The former implies that he pays virtually no taxes, whereas the latter still makes it clear that he pays millions of dollars in taxes.
2. They purposely ignore that the effective federal income tax rate on large portions of the country are in fact negative (which is what Romney was referring to with his particularly ill-timed gaffe) because they are only using the theoretical tax rate on the ones of lower income for comparison while using the effective tax rate for the millionaires.
3. They paint the way his tax level is low as being because of those mythical "loopholes" which are in fact only legitimate tax adjustments put in place because of the government. For example, buy a certain thing instead of another thing and you can write it off from the regular income tax. Buy more energy efficient things you can usually write them off entirely and sometimes even get tax credits. Donate a third of your income to charity, and you only have to pay taxes on the 66% that you have left. In essence it is a punishment for doing the things that the government encourages (this is how corporate tax rates are usually portrayed too. A company modernizing their facilities to government specifications or something of that nature are rewarded usually with tax credits and grants, so if a company pays a billion dollars in taxes but gets a billion dollars from the government for doing something the government wanted then the company is claimed to have paid no taxes and how awful is that?).
4. They purposely fail to distinguish the difference between regular earned income and capital gains.

 

And there was a 5th thing but I forgot what it was while typing this up. The important thing is, to use an idiotic analogy to speaker wire; the overwhelming majority of the time when a politician talks about tax rates and how they need to be changed, there is a thin wire of truth surrounded by about 2 inches of rubber insulation.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Tornado

[Patticus]

Chris Christie is too ugly to run for President.

 

:\/

 

He's the one man in American politics whom Vladimir Putin couldn't snap like a twig and throw across the room into his trash can with basketball net attachment. That fact alone makes him worthy of consideration.

[Tornado]

That's just because he's too fat to fit through a basketball hoop.

 

 

 

Plus, if inability to get dunked on was one of the defining characteristics of being presidential (which, since white men can't jump, would explain why Romney lost), than America would have elected a much better black basketball player from Chicago in 2008 than Obama: Michael Jordan.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Tornado

[Autosaver]

On top of that, he offsets losses and makes massive donations to charity (which are hilariously painted as being a bad thing, even though charitable contributions only change your deduction amount rather than act as a tax credit), and his effective tax rate drops down below 15%

This reminds me of the time when Paul Ryan went to the soup kitchen to make a mess and leave.

Irrelevant but brought back hilarious memories.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

He's the one man in American politics whom Vladimir Putin couldn't snap like a twig and throw across the room into his trash can with basketball net attachment. That fact alone makes him worthy of consideration.

We don't elect fuckin' uglies hur in Amureka you dolt! You know that.

[Patticus]

Looks like Obama's setting up another fight for himself in the Senate over another cabinet nomination:

 

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama will nominate former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to be his defense secretary, and an announcement could come on Monday, a congressional Democratic aide said on Sunday.

The choice will likely set up a confirmation battle in the Senate over whether the former Nebraska senator strongly supports key U.S. ally Israel. Hagel also has been criticized for comments he made questioning the effectiveness of sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program.

This fight would come after the Obama administration backed down from a tough Senate confirmation battle over Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations who was Obama's first pick to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Rice withdrew her name from consideration after drawing heavy fire from Republicans for remarks she made in the aftermath of a September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.

"The administration has a lot of work to do on Hagel. He is in a weaker position now than Rice ever was because Rice would have rallied Democrats behind her," a Senate Democratic aide said. "The administration floated Hagel's name, then neglected to defend him effectively when his critics started taking shots," the aide said.

Last month Obama offered strong support for Hagel as a possible replacement for Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who had said he wanted to leave early in the second term.

"I've served with Chuck Hagel. I know him. He is a patriot. He is somebody who has done extraordinary work both in the United States Senate, somebody who served this country with valor in Vietnam," Obama told NBC's "Meet the Press" on December 30.

 
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/06/us-obama-defense-hagel-idUSBRE90507Q20130106

 

So, Hagel - good choice or bad? He certainly doesn't sound like a boot-licker, but I don't know all that much about him so I can't really offer an opinion.

[Kevin]

Looks like Obama's setting up another fight for himself in the Senate over another cabinet nomination:

 

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/06/us-obama-defense-hagel-idUSBRE90507Q20130106

 

So, Hagel - good choice or bad? He certainly doesn't sound like a boot-licker, but I don't know all that much about him so I can't really offer an opinion.

I'm surprise he didn't pick John Kerry to be his next Secretary of Defense. He's more than qualified to be so.

[Patticus]

Kerry's going for the Secretary of State position vacated by Hillary Clinton. He seems pretty keen on it.

[Kevin]

Kerry's going for the Secretary of State position vacated by Hillary Clinton. He seems pretty keen on it.

I just realized that I misread Secretary of Defense as Secretary of State in your last post. Whoops.

[Stacy]

Tubby McFatFuck I mean Alex Jones was on Piers Morgan show last night to discuss mainly Gun Control and made a complete arse of himself talking shit comparing gun Control to Hitler and Stalin. Still can't believe people listen to this Fraud!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1Ddb3oa5CE

 

If you have seen a better video of the interview lets us know and I will change it.   

Edited January 15, 2013 by BW199148

[Patticus]

Alex wasn't doing too bad at the beginning, calling Piers out on his debating technique (stressing little factoids with irrelevant implications to deflate his opponent), but he went totally off the rails after that.

 

He'll have his own Fox News show before we know it.

[Stacy]

Alex wasn't doing too bad at the beginning, calling Piers out on his debating technique (stressing little factoids with irrelevant implications to deflate his opponent), but he went totally off the rails after that.

 

He'll have his own Fox News show before we know it.

 

Its funny I don't like Pier Morgan much either but I agree with on some things regarding Gun Control and side with him in this interview on somethings.

 

Alex goes makes himself look a paranoid tub of lard and I am surprised as well that Fox haven't hired him perhaps he is too batshit even for them.

 

"WHY SO BATSHIT?".

[Gaming Misfit]

FOX News would never give Alex Jones his own show, anyone who even dares question the official story of 9/11 is considered "non-american" and a "disgrace to the people and those who died in the tragedy". 

[Tornado]

On the other hand, people who question the official story of 9/11 are also usually "idiots," so he would fit right in with most of the other Fox pundits.

Edited January 15, 2013 by Tornado

[Gaming Misfit]

Ouch, that hurts, Tornado.

[Gaming Misfit]

However, Alex Jones IS an idiot.  And this video is hilarious.

 

[Dr. Homem]

Sorry if this is not the current topic, but it is relevant enough to be brought up:

 

Today on a Q&A, former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said this about the current (deteriorated) state of the Republican party.

The most important thing is that we need to be a party that is inclusive and tolerant. We can be those things and be the party we always have been. We need to think about the environment - Teddy Roosevelt was a great environmentalist and people forget Reagan was the one who dealt with the ozone layer with the Montreal protocol. We also need to talk about healthcare honestly - Nixon almost passed universal healthcare. We need to have an talk about immigration and realize you can't just deport people. We need a comprehensive answer. We also need to stay out of people's bedrooms. The party that is for small government shouldn't be over-reaching into people's private lives.

 

Mainly, we need to be a party where people know what we are for, not just what we are against.

I think this is pretty spot-on. There is much potential in the Republican ideology, and it is frustrating to see so much of that spirit lost in today's Washington rhetoric.

 

What are your thoughts?

Edited January 16, 2013 by Dr. Homem

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

So this has been quite on my mind, and I have a question for some of you guys who have far more insight to the topic: What's the situation between the US and China? My current knowledge is that they are neither allies nor enemies, and that China holds a lot of the US's debt and is building up it's military to compete with the US, that China is using it's resources of Rare Earth Metals (and probably it's ties with the DPRK) as a diplomatic weapon, and that a war between the US and China would be an extremely retarded and potentially devastating situation, nevermind the number of diplomatic ties that would be broken in the process with other countries. Kinda reminds me of the build up for WWI. I also hear experts saying that China's economy will grow even bigger than the US in around 20 or so years in the future.

 

The reason why I am asking this is that I've been reading a number of fiction (the most recent being the first 5 chapters Dragon Empire that involves directed energy weapons, interesting read despite my rant coming up) that illustrates a war between the two major powers, and as interesting as the possibility of such an occurrence happening in fiction I am SO FUCKING SICK of reading how China would be the aggressor in these situations. It's like the fucking Yellow Peril all over again.

 

And I honestly don't think either side would be so stupid to even bother wanting to try and go at each other in such a conflict, and even in the future I don't see it happening because of China wanting to have an iron grip over the world that a lot of fiction loves to portray. They're not like the USSR in trying to expand their territory in conquering other nations despite the border dispute I hear they had with India or how they still consider Taiwan a part of China (or are they secretly like the USSR?), and while they're pushing to become the next superpower, I seriously doubt they would try to attack the US or it's allies out of aggression without facing some serious consequences.

 

But really, would China even bother being the way a lot of current fiction portrays them to be in the future? It's like the US is still stuck in a bit of a Cold War mentality thinking that China may try to invade and that we're either paranoid or just looking for someone to portray in a bad light. Sure they throw their political weight around, but as a nation they're not too different from the US as far as protecting their own interest.

 

I mean really, I'm having trouble putting the puzzle together here.

Edited January 18, 2013 by ChaosSupremeSonic

[Stacy]

Well I am certain America and China aren't best friends. I don't think they are at each other throats politicly. Economically there is definitely some tension but that is like everybody else with China.

 

Though China and Japan are fighting over a island which China claims to be in their waters and Japan claims it is in theirs.

 

When it comes to interests and Ideology I think America is more concerned with what is developing in Africa (Algeria, Mali) and the Middle East (Syria, Iran, Pakistan) right now.   

 

EDIT: There is always Latin America which the US grips tighter to than an Eagle's claws when it swoops in on its prey. 

Edited January 18, 2013 by BW199148