Open Thread Dec. 19: Are Space Aliens Our Only Hope?
The biggest mystery in American politics today isn’t the question of why Republicans are pretending Donald Trump is just a normal, regular politician — it’s why they think passing their toxic tax-cut bill will be greeted by the public as a “victory.” Two-thirds of those polled are against it, and one-third is brainwashed that it will actually help the economy, which doesn’t need any help right now.
Given their innate criminal nature, it’s no surprise Republicans in Congress have resorted to outright bribery to pass this abomination. That bribery is most evident in the case of Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, who, though he opposes Trump, is acting just like him. Corker was a holdout until a modification was made that will benefit him personally to the tune of hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. Remember, Republicans have principles, and the main one is, “Give me all your money.”
Rich people have been selling the lie about tax cuts for a long time — all the way back to Andrew Mellon, who apparently was the first to sell tax cuts for the rich as self-funding. He could claim this because it hadn’t been tried yet. Now that it’s failed repeatedly, what’s the GOP’s excuse?
Josh Marshall explains why the Trump legal team is acting so huffy about those legally obtained emails: They probably show that some people knowingly lied to the FBI.
Eugene Robinson points out something that in any other administration would be incredibly controversial: The Trump family’s obvious self-enrichment, which he dubs the Trump Family Swamp, a name I don’t expect will catch on.
Today in presidential pettiness, Trump apparently considered rescinding Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court because he wasn’t sufficiently loyal. He’s like a mafia don, minus the brains.
Finally, I am looking to a new hope in the age of Trump: The government actually spent money trying to figure out what’s up with UFOs. I figure they took one look at Trump and headed back to Alpha Centauri, convinced there’s no intelligent life here.
My slim hope is that when the truth of this tax bill sinks in and the average Trumpists see that they aren’t really getting anything, just maybe they will start to realize what they have.done.
Why on earth would we want contact with space aliens? If they’re anything like us the result could be very ugly. If their technology is so advanced that they can get here it would be easy for them to kill us or take over (maybe insisting it’s “for our own good”). As Hawking says, we might just look like so much bacteria to them. And as Kurt Vonnegut said, be careful what you wish for because you might get what you wish for.
“Take me to your leader”
“ehhhh… I’m not sure that’s really who you want to talk to. Maybe I can find someone that would be more appropriate.”
On the other hand, maybe they’ll take him back with them.
Homesteader: Trumpists don’t need to vote against Trump. At 40% in the polls six of 10 will vote against him.
Alby: let’s not forget how Corker first entered the Senate, by playing the racist card again Harold Ford. Never forgot that amidst all the “praise” for Corker in the mainstream media the last year or so. I think how he won counts against him and his party.
I used to get excited when polls indicated that Americans opposed a bad idea. But my mistake was to think that numerical values also indicated intensity and constancy of displeasure. When polls and massive American street protests indicate outrage at bad ideas, I’ll start getting excited again. In the meantime, I’ll just count on the American populace’s short-term impulses of displeasure as indicating practically nothing of significance.
You know, this is not 1846, its 2017, and all everyone has to do is google a summary of the tax bill. If they do this they will see that it lowers taxes for practically every tax payer. Even for the tax payers in the two tax brackets that don’t go down, most of those people’s taxes will still go down because of the increase in the standard deduction. And, to top it off Bernie, the fake Socialist says if Democrats win back congress in 2018, they will raise our taxes back up, so you guys have that going for you at the mid terms
Mr Dils wrote:
I’m old enough to remember the last time the Democrats ran on increasing taxes; Walter Mondale carried one state.
I can see the left campaigning on raising the corporate tax rate, even though they said it should be lowered during the Obama Administration, because they hope that Americans aren’t bright enough to realize that corporations pay no taxes; they simply collect them from their customers.
But, not to worry: even if the Democrats win control of both Houses of Congress in 2018, they won’t be able to increase taxes with President Trump still in the White House.
Kansas Republicans ran on raising taxes. REagan raised taxes three times. Repubs can be forced to raise taxes if the disaster is big enough
Rusty, i hope you remember this praise and boot-licking thanks you have for the crubs you’ve just been tossed when you’re told you will never see a penny of the Social Security you’ve been paying in to your whole working life. I will personally called you an entitled leach for being upset about it.
@B “…when you’re told you will never see a penny of the Social Security…”
It won’t be no pennies, but it will be a lot less than what was promised.
They just “printed” $1.5 trillion new dollars!!! The value of all that new money comes from old money… the kind of money that Dils has been putting into Social Security.
Dils and Dana are swimming in entitlements. They’ve lived during the golden age of the country taking care of old dumbfucks. Don’t worry about them. They got theirs.
Selfish myopic old bitter white men are evil
Our esteemed host wrote:
Don’t know about Mr Dils, but for me, almost: I got my Medicare card earlier this month, but it doesn’t take effect until next April. I retired at 64, and started taking my Social Security at that point.
Some of the Republican members of Congress want to find some ways to cut Social Security and Medicare costs, but President Trump campaigned on not touching those two programs. And it doesn’t matter on what Paul Ryan muses: Republicans depend upon a healthy percentage of the elderly voting for them, and cutting Medicare or Social Security is the quickest way they know to become private citizens again.
The younger President Bush proposed allowing those 55 and younger to change their 6.2% Social Security tax to 4.2% plus 2% going into privatized accounts. They would receive smaller Social Security payouts from the government, but have those privatized accounts as well. The proposal would have been entirely voluntary, but it didn’t matter: the Democrats excoriated him for the proposal. I don’t know how much such a proposal would have helped the SS program, but at least he was proposing something.
The most I’ve seen from the left is a proposal to raise, or perhaps even eliminate, the income ceiling at which Social Security taxes cease. Since your Social Security retirement benefit is based on how much you contribute to the program while you are working, such a proposal would only be fair if people who were paying much more into the program received retirement benefits commensurate with their contributions.
I do remember former Senator John Edwards (D-NC) the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee. Mr Edwards structured his income as an attorney to pay himself a salary through an S Corporation, which increased the amount of Social Security taxes he had to pay, but greatly diminished the amount of Medicare taxes for which he was liable; there is no income cap on the Medicare tax. Mr Edwards campaigned on his ‘two America’ theme, but he was taking advantage of every little loophole he could find to reduce his own tax liability.
I was opposed to the tax bill for one reason: it raises the deficit. I wanted to see spending cut first, not taxes. But now that taxes have been cut, I’ll take advantage of the cuts to the best of my ability.
When were you born? College? Veteran? What jobs have you held in adulthood? Any union/ civil service protections? I take it you worked through the postwar boom years lots of investments in infrastructure throughout your life. You are a fattened hog. Luckily you’ll be dead soon.
“Since your Social Security retirement benefit is based on how much you contribute to the program while you are working, such a proposal would only be fair if people who were paying much more into the program received retirement benefits ”
So says you. I define “fair” differently — as in, since the rich benefit far more than any of the rest of us from our economic and governmental system, they should pay for it. All of it. You don’t think that’s fair? Tough shit. I don’t think what you call “fair” is fair, either.
Jason asked me:
1953.
Yes, I did work for my entire life, though ‘postwar boom years’ were a bit before my time in the industry. I worked in good years and bad, worked my entire life. That’s the operative part: I worked!
Will I be dead soon? Well, who knows: I could drop dead today, but, then again, so could anyone else here. My best friend paid into Social Security all his working life, and he went to his eternal reward at the age of 63; maybe he helped pay for my Social Security!
See, some people “deserve” it and some people don’t. Clever scheme.
You have the self-awareness of a guppy.
There’s millions of myopic fools who will see getting a few bucks as themselves winning
What work did you do Mr. Self made man? And yeah…You’ll be dead soon.
My parents made me
Mr 330 asked:
Ready-mixed concrete production and quality control, in Virginia, Delaware and Pennsylvania. When you walk into the new New Castle County Courthouse building, you’re walking on concrete I designed and produced.
There’s plenty more besides that, of course, but that was one with which I was sure you’d be familiar. I did specialty concrete for repair work under the I-95 bridges in Wilmington, and some on I-495, plus major projects at Astra-Zeneca and the Port of Wilmington. And there were a lot of homes built in New Castle County that used concrete I worked on.
Sucking on the government tit, just as I thought.
Padded government contracts. Probably no-bid backroom deals. Disgusting.
And he undoubtedly got his first job from a connected uncle. When is the white man ever going to get a break in this country?
he built it himself
Why are we giving Dana a hard time here?
In the spectrum of possible jobs he could have reported, his actual profession seems rather benign. Civil engineering jobs, and all that’s under that, are not usually scorned professions.
In fact, lack of this in the US, versus China or pretty much everywhere, is a growing problem. Our infrastructure is starting to really suck.
For example, Spain has more than 6,000 miles of high speed rail. We’ve got none (and we can’t even keep our trains on the tracks of our mid-speed rail). Guess how much cement was poured there? Guess how much is being poured in China building all their new fancy stuff?
And sure, China has a lot of problems with some of the stuff they’re building, but at least they’re trying. All our politicians do is steal money for the rich.
“Civil engineering jobs, and all that’s under that, are not usually scorned professions.”
Nobody scorned Dana’s profession. We scorn Dana’s lack of appreciation for the taxpayer funding that pays for all that concrete.
If Dana said he did all that as a union man. And if he knew why that was important. Then cool.
However, he has the awareness of an earthworm. No idea why he has no idea.
Dig it?
Like some many white men of his age, Dana is a clueless fucking nit wit who thinks he hasn’t had any breaks, where in fact, he has all of them.