I wish they’d just let the tax cuts ALL expire.

Between that and truly ending the wars, 2/3 of the deficit would go poof.

Huh…. my copy of the King James Bible says, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” And a lengthy passage about how Jesus was giving us a new law, which was supposed to replace all the old laws, and it was simply this: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

On another note, I have a feeling Pastor Worley thinks about kissing men all the time. Like every waking moment of every day.

So, anybody taking bets on how massive Dimon’s platinum parachute will be?

I’m guessing a $100-150m handshake.

Until California gets rid of Prop 13, the state is doomed to a long and lingering demise. Especially since the only non-tax solutions consist of raising fees on the 99% and cutting essential services.

They also need to make it harder to stampede mobs of morons into voting for dumb propositions.

* = Fair disclosure, my wife and I are former Californians who, after living abroad for several years, realized we simply couldn’t afford to move back there. Not because of taxes, but because the cost of living is too damned high.

I love California, but when my wife and I were coming back to the States after spending several years living abroad, we came to two conclusions: It was too expensive to live there anymore and the whole infrastructure was falling apart due to lack of adequate funding. We ended up relocating to New Mexico. If we were to move anywhere else from here, it’d probably be Oregon at this point.

California used to have the country’s best public universities. No more. The best parks. Decaying, under constant threat of being closed. The best public open spaces. Being sold to private developers. Honestly, I’m expecting the high speed rail project to be canceled any day now.

CA has had more than 30 years under Prop 13. It’s been an unmitigated disaster. They need to get a new Prop on the ballot to rescind it and return viable budgetary powers to the CA legislature where they belong.

I’m 49. My wife is 69. We must be total statistical outliers.

I felt exactly the same way, Pam. Maybe a little bit of a good feeling to hear Obama finally say that gay and lesbian couples should be able to marry.

But it came too late to help NC. His support wasn’t there at all back in ’08 with Prop 8. And once again he essentially said marriage laws should be up to the states — which as far as I can tell is a gigantic FU to every gay and lesbian-headed family who live in any of the bigot-dominated states, which is still most of them.

He gives us words — welcome words, but just words — when what we need is action. There is nothing but his own reluctance stopping Obama from signing the EO he said during the ’08 campaign he’d do as soon as he got into office. The Executive branch is constantly drawing up new rules and regulations, and he could easily direct the INS to find ways to define ‘family’ so bi-national couples weren’t broken up. And lots of other possibilities.

No, I don’t want Romney to win. No, I’m not telling anyone not to vote for Obama. But despite his words yesterday being groundbreaking for a sitting U.S. president, it still leaves me cold to hear him say, essentially, “I think you should have those rights…but hey, it’s up to your state to give them to you if they want.”

Leading isn’t “calling on” people to do for themselves what you’re unwilling to do to help them. The federal government is supposed to guarantee fundamental rights for ALL Americans, not just those who happen to live in a gay-friendly state.

As far as I can tell, Obama remains oblivious to the irony of his saying marriage laws ought to be left to the states…

A shame the LCRs couldn’t be classy about this.

Either that or, “We just want more moneyz.”

‘Publicly justifying’ a massive rate increase in no way requires them to have that justification make sense or even be true.

Well, let’s see here now… Social Security taxes are capped at the first $110,100 of taxable income.

Virtually all of the gains in income over the decade have gone to those who were already making well over $110k a year — the 1%.

For the 99%, incomes have stagnated and unemployment is far higher than the numbers we commonly hear because it never includes people who’ve given up looking for work or who are under-employed (part-time, working well under experience, etc.). Of COURSE the Social Security tax intake from the rest of us working stiffs is down.

What would fix this and make Social Security and Medicare solvent forever? (1) Get people back to work in good, fair-paying jobs that support a solid middle class and a strong track to help poor people aspire to that status. (2) Remove the $110k income cap on the taxes.

I will admit I am deeply impressed with the extreme levels of cognitive dissonance Grenell has managed to maintain without interruption for decades now.

So he says he “turned” on the Bush administration over an anti-gay slight that he took personally…and now works as a top advisor and spokesweasel for a GOP presidential candidate who says he’s on board for a Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in America forever, in a party committed to enshrining all forms of discrimination against gays and lesbians, and which has no problem with the idea of a nation making being a homosexual a death penalty offense.

Damned impressive.

One detail folks forget is among the several reasons Santorum lost his Senate reelection bid in 2006 was it became general knowledge that Pennsylvania was no longer his “home state.”

He’d moved his family out of Penn Hills and over to Virginia for the duration, and defrauded Penn Hills out of tens of thousands of dollars by claiming his family lived in a house that in 2004 was reported as all but abandoned.

PA voters did not forget or forgive Santorum’s literal abandonment of his constituency. He’s not going to do well in the state.

Sounds to me like the March 5th absence (evening before Super Tuesday primaries) was the proverbial straw.

We can speculate all we like as to hidden motivations, but c’mon — ever since early January of this year, it was pretty much a coin flip on any given night whether Keith would be hosting his own show. Plus, I doubt all those guest hosts worked for free. His ratings, while still high by Current TV standards, were not improving over time — they were slipping steadily.

Advertisers wanted to be on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, not Countdown with Some Random Unknown Host; his frequent unscheduled absences had to have been hurting ad revenues.

Keith’s interview guests? Mostly the same dozen people, over and over.

This is the first I’d heard it was Keith’s choice to drop the background and go with black. If so, it was not a smart decision in terms of visuals. To me, it was depressing, dark, and gave the eye nothing else to look at. It was not a decision a video production professional would make. There are reasons for the chrome, plexiglas, moving video displays, swirly colors, and camera movements, because people don’t want to see nothing but a disembodied, context-less torso and head for most of an hour.

Then came the repetition. Same topics every night for weeks at a time, and the same order (a pattern which Spitzer doesn’t appear to be deviating from either, which doesn’t bode well…). Trayvon Martin. The ACA and health insurance reform. The GOP presidential candidate circus. Rush Limbaugh. The occasional baseball self-indulgence. For me, the breaking point was the Breitbart ‘video mashup’ segment (“Stop raping people!”). Once was funny. Twice wasn’t. All week long was aggressively annoying.

I had high hopes for KO on Current… over on MSNBC, Rachel is the only one I still catch regularly. Now, if I do still tune in to Current TV, it’ll probably be for Cenk Uygur, who I find interesting and solidly progressive. Might check out Granholm.

I wish Keith well. But when you love a job, you don’t avoid it. Seems pretty clear he wasn’t loving his job there.

Let’s not forget, the insurance companies have been rejecting people for the most trivial of ‘pre-existing conditions.’

Have asthma? You’re uninsurable. Get migraines or seasonal allergies? Uninsurable (these last two are why I could not get insurance until the ACA high risk pool came along). Psoriasis? Uninsurable. Mild arthritis? Uninsurable. Back trouble? Breast implants? Overweight?

All of these have been cited as reasons for rejection by insurance companies.

They don’t want anybody who has ever or will soon likely make any use of health care.

Hmm… let’s see how this sounds if recast:

“I’m urging the parents of young teenage girls particularly not to let them go out wearing short skirts. I think the short skirt is as much responsible for a girl being raped as the rapist is.”

Or: “I’m urging the parents of gay kids particularly not to let them go out wearing gay-looking clothes. I think overly-flamboyant clothes are as much responsible for gay-related assaults and murders as the attackers are.”

Or: “I’m urging the parents of Muslim kids particularly not to let them go out wearing traditional Muslim clothing. I think Muslim clothes are as much responsible for religious bias crimes as those committing them.”

Nope, always offensive, no matter the context. Geraldo Rivera is and always will be a total d-nozzle.

So… you’re renting your house back from the bank and suddenly a pipe bursts, or the furnace breaks down, or the roof needs replacing.

Who pays for it? Who arranges to have these things repaired?

If no one draws a line, they’ll just keep asking for more and more.

Yeah — this is one of those lines for me. I’ll consent to sign an agreement not to disparage a company while I’m in their employ. Give them access to my private social accounts? No.