this is a real and huge scandal; not a phoney one like the IRS, Benghazi or court packing.

do the goopers hate Obama enough to make an issue of the surveillance. or do they love the national security state and the war on terror more?
what about your average, freedom loving, gun nut; does he love his first amendment rights as much as his gun rights?

democracy is dead.
killed many times, but also by police and a federal government who cant tolerate the public endorsing medical marijuana or legalizing the sale and taxing of mj.

doing business in public accommodations means taking care of the public, not deciding that some protected class is ugly to you.
if you want to not serve a wedding because the bride is ugly or the groom has bad personal hygiene, that would be ok, right?

you can judge a country and its media and its society by how differently it treats the crimes perpetrated by the killers in the Boston Massacre and the killers in the West Texas slaughter.
killing for profit, so cool.

maybe most important, the chain cpi vote in Congress will leave Dems in Congress who support it stuck; it will drive many dems from the party at the polls — perhaps for a long time — and it will become a campaign issue that fuels the gop.
what about this works as politics?
i cant figure that one out.
does obama see that this as a noble and historic stand, aking to LBJ’s campaign for civil rights — alienating southern whites for generations — without any upside?

why dont i care about this at all?
fools fail at something useless?

yea, raising taxes on the robber class was easy. so easy that obama had to give up on the cut-off point on the tax hike — the one he had promised for two years.
and all the workers still had their taxes raised two percent.

my real question for you fdlers:
does anyone here take seriously the idea that OB put forward chain cpi
and the 400k tax floor earlier this month because he bet the goops would
reject it?
and that made his hand stronger and the goops look more insane; sort of
the OB version of that question from the gooper primary: would you take a
tax cut and spending deal with a 10:1 ratio?
the 10 dwarfs all said: NO.

the whole thing adds to the momentum for filibuster fix when new Senate convenes, too.

does anyone here take seriously the idea that OB put forward chain cpi and the 400k tax floor earlier this month because he bet the goops would reject it?
and that made his hand stronger and the goops look more insane; sort of the OB version of that question from the gooper primary: would you take a tax cut and spending deal with a 10:1 ration.
the 10 dwarfs all said: NO.

your points are the only reason, let me repeat: the only reason, that i cut OB some slack on the negotiations with the goopers. he has done allot this time around to ensure that long-term unemployed continue to get unemployment insurance.

he did that a couple of years ago, as well, albeit at a time when he switched stimulus to a program that reduced benefits of the stimulus/tax cut to the poorest. that was ugly.

yes, it is the perfect tax vehicle.
congressional staff for the goopers argued to me about what they say is the central tenet of American ethos: That our society is built on the entrepreneurial spirit of earning and daring and getting ahead.
OK.
if you accept that then the estate tax should be much higher. because creating a hereditary rich and ruling class is a denial of that spirit.

two things bother me about what is going on in the coming strike and the NYTimes story:
–the level of greed for the shippers is remarkable, even for their class in this day and age. in 1960, there were 35k stevedores, today there are 3,500 in working the docks. shippers have eliminated 90% of the workers with productivity gains and ship way more stuff. yet they want to cut the productivity bonus program.
9 out of every 10 workers is gone and they ship more stuff! and they want more!
–every story like this that tries to focus on the wage of high-end union workers, should also list the wage — or the reporter should at least ask and record the no comment — of the shipping company executives and flax who comment, as well as the other experts and academicians.
if the wage of the workers is pertinent, so is the wage of the others in the story.

brave, simply bravo, from your days at digby to your work here.
i have read it daily and more.
blessings of the solstice and into the light for you DD.

that is a fantasy pic of boehner, right?

agreed.
first raise taxes as shown here,http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/08/us/variations-on-obamas-tax-plan.html?ref=politics
top left box, along with tough estate taxes, with rates going to at least 75%, while having a low single-figure exemption.

then, find a path to get unemployment benefits extended.

me too on this way, not the hiway.

take the off-ramp from the Bush tax cuts.
it is allot clearer on the road.

dont forget droney.
i dont.
dont forget forgiving the phone company complicity with wiretaps.
i dont.

but i do believe in the what-if fairy.