Monday Open Thread
Welcome to your Monday open thread. I’ve just arrived back at home so I’m about to catch up on my sleep. Sleeping on the red-eye didn’t make me feel very rested.
You know it’s true. Republicans want the energy and money of the teabaggers but want them to sit down and shut up. Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck got caught on tape dissing the birthers:
Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Ken Buck called Tea Partyers questioning the authenticity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate “dumba—s” to a Democratic operative recording his comments without his permission.
On an audio tape obtained by The Denver Post, Buck was caught muttering “will you tell those dumba—s at the Tea Party to stop asking questions about birth certificates while I’m on the camera?” outside a June 11 event in Crowley.
Buck then started laughing as he walked into the event with the Democratic tracker.
“What am I supposed to do?” he asked, rhetorically.
Oopsie!
It looks like the Republican tax cut/deficit hypocrisy may become an issue for the elections. The Bush tax cuts are expiring at the end of year (if you remember, the Republicans passed them through reconciliation which means they have to expire so as not to add to the deficit). Now Republicans want to continue the tax cuts even though they’re responsible for 60% of the deficit which Republicans claim to care so much about.
The NYT noted over the weekend that the issue will “move to the top of the agenda when lawmakers return to Washington in September from their summer recess, just as the midterm campaign gets under way in earnest.”
Negotiations are expected to start in the Senate, where it is hardest for Democrats to advance legislation because of Republican filibusters. But some Democrats say a fallback plan would be to have their larger majority in the House approve a continuation of the lower rates just for the middle class right before the election, almost daring Republicans to oppose them.
In that case, Democrats say, Republicans who opposed the bill would be blocking a tax cut for more than 95 percent of Americans to defend tax cuts for a relatively few wealthy households.
Every time Republicans complain, the same answer should come to mind — it was their idea for the cuts to expire. Maybe if the GOP hadn’t left a $1.3 trillion deficit for Democrats to clean up, it’d be easier to talk about keeping more of the tax breaks Republicans love so much.
I’m sure Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson and other conservaDems will find a way to screw things up.
Tags: Open Thread
after reading the News Journal for the last two days, can someone help calm my fears that I’m drinking/brushing my teeth with/showering in poison?
http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20100726/NEWS/7260329/Polluted-water-found-statewide
As thorough as their coverage is I can’t seem to find anything we can do to protect ourselves. Essentially all I’m reading is EVERYONE IS FUCKED! Is my reading comprehension off?
help?
well, at least Businesses can operate in a Free Market. that’s what’s important.
At least he was telling the truth. CO GOP Senate candidate calls birthers dumbasses. That was the expletive WaPo wouldn’t publish.
The News Journal is reporting that Chris Coons and his wife lent his campaign $250,000 last quarter. Wow, that’s news. A rich guy backs his own campaign.
“well, at least Businesses can operate in a Free Market. that’s what’s important.
Please consider that the ‘Free Market’ businesses should share responsibility with the very agencies charged with the responsibility of protecting us. It’s lawful to pollute the environment in Delaware. What makes it unlawful is the failing to get permission from DNREC. As long the required permits are obtained, and the businesses stay within the parameters of said permits, they’re free to dump, inject, and otherwise deliver carcinogenic substances into the air and water. Even when they violate the conditions of the permit, most of the administrative penalties are simply a cost of doing business.
Please, the libertarians in government have neutered the agencies and froth at the mouth whenever any real reform is proposed. The protectors of the bottom line have made it cheaper to pay the fine than make the fix. I’m not saying Big Business doesn’t have allies in the government, i’m saying they are using those moles ot give us all cancer to they can get a bigger jet next year.
All Hail the All Powerful Free Market.
I can’t complain about someone who calls the birthers dumbasses. They’re dumbasses.
The expiration of the tax cuts will be great, provided one of two things happens:
A)Taxes go down for the middle/lower classes
B)The deficit is reduced, and the money not put to a program or dept.
How much do you folks despise small business? Here are two examples of problems with the HCR law. http://www.delawarepolitics.net/love-the-so-called-health-reform-bill/ It will destroy the best plans at controling costs and give businesses small and large crazy paper work burdens unrelated to health care.
the only people who hate small business is BIG business. and the people who LOVE big business is republiKKKans.
It is what the right in this country cant seem to wrap their feeble little minds around. the GOP protects big business. big business is the ENEMY of small business. ERGO republicans hate small business. and they should… not nearly the campaign contribution potential of Halliburton.
when the Bush tax rates expire, everybody’s taxes go up.
every bracket gets a rate increase.
deductions will be cut
the rate on capital gains goes up
the rate on dividens goes up
and the death tax come roaring back
I agree with Republicking David about this. The 1099 provision is absurd and has to go. It is an unnecessary burden on ALL businesses – big and small. BTW, it was added to the HCR bill primarily to allow the government to track gold trading through dealers and corresponding capital gains tax evasion – it has NOTHING to do with HCR. (Not that the HCR bill had much to do with real HCR, anyway.)
HCR 2010 = WMD 2002: Obomba lied while real HCR died.
Ish is factually wrong as usual. This comment is interesting though, because it is not only wrong but internally contradictory.
alright chubby, I’ll bite… what is wrong and what is contradictory?
Why are Republicans complaining about the tax cuts expiring? They are the ones that designed them that way.
Breitbart got Breitbarted. He’s explaining in the video how much he loves al Qaeda.
Thanks, UI, that was a spot on video! Now, if some television outlet will just run it constantly!!
Wow, former Reagan official Bruce Bartlett smacks around Republicans. Read the whole thing but here’s a juicy snippet:
Daaaaaaaaaaaang!
You can tell Bartlett has turned into a socialist when he uses the word programme.
That’s easier on the eyes than Paris Hilton.
Wikileaks 2010 = Pentagon Papers 1971
Obomba’s Afghanistan 2010 = Johnson’s Vietnam 1968
Stop the war. Stop the cover-up. U.S. out of Afghanistan now.
V: If you’re worried about the water, act as you would in a third-world country: Brush with and drink only bottled water, keep your mouth closed in the shower.
A1. Is on day two of trying to get someone to comment on the wikileaks. guess what? Everyone here already knew the war was fucked sideways.
Reports back from Harrington say that Urqhart has a huge presence at the State Fair and Rollins is MIA.
Rollins seems a bit disengaged but she sure got the moneybags to open their wallets to her.
In the early 90’s,SUPERFUND money was used to address two of the most hazardous waste sites in the country:Army Creek and Tybouts Corner landfills.
I worked on both.Army Creek from the very beginning to almost the last.
Rather than remove and properly bury or incinerate the toxic,carcinogenic and sometimes explosive contamination they opted to put a “CAP” on the combined acreages.
First,we removed all the vegetation.Any 55 gallon drums on the surface were dealt with by Operators and Laborers,fully protected and trained in hazardous waste handling, putting them in over sized drums to be hauled away.
Then we began putting layers of various materials down that mimicked the contours of the site; 2 feet of select,compacted every six inches,a 40 mm layer of a durable polypropylene covering that was welded as to be one piece upon completion.Another foot of select,1′ pea gravel,1′ sand,1’topsoil.The site was seeded with grass.Wells were drilled for monitoring and to allow for the building gas below to escape.They were sealed also.
I quietly observed to myself that this was doing nothing but putting a band-aid over a festering pustule.
When someone from DiPasquale’s office brought the press by for a photo op,I voiced my opinion loudly and vociferously.Her answer,”Who are you?Are you with the press”?Mine,”No,I’m a native Delawarean”!
My fears have come back to haunt me.
The chemical industry GOT what they wanted.No more SUPERFUND.A program that was trying to do something and only needed some backbone.
Skipper –
I am being a near-total non-informed in this, but in the very least for surface and near-surface contaminations, isn’t mustard-grass supposedly something that can actually consume and thrive on crap like this? Granted, this is way beyond that now, but since it’s the topic, I recall hearing or reading about this a long time ago and wonder if that is accurate.
I really am not sleeping well, though, after reading Sunday’s installment of that series (a damned good job, btw, of the NJ). I have to wonder, and I don’t think I am being too hyper about it, can much of NCCo and some of Kent now be considered Superfund with this way-deep contamination? The reach of this potential disaster (the Patomic Aquifer…what the FREAK) is unfathomable. We (generic “we”) really effing suck.
The Cherry Island Dump, sans liner, is located on top of an aquafier.
RE: Tybouts….houses have been built sooooo close to that mess it will be a miracle if people in the area not to be effected.
“Rollins seems a bit disengaged but she sure got the moneybags to open their wallets to her.”
You couldn’t tell that by her display at the State Fair today. Her unstaffed exhibit was rather sparse, comparatively. A few pieces of literature, and a pile deflated balloons. By comparison, the Hollywood Racing Pigs attraction was spectacular.
“RE: Tybouts… houses have been built sooooo close to that mess it will be a miracle if people in the area not to be effected.”
They’d be surprised to find out what’s under the park at Fox Point too. Talk about putting lipstick on a pig…
They’d be surprised to find out what’s under the park at Fox Point too. Talk about putting lipstick on a pig…
Lived in Edgemoor from age 10 to 18. I know far more than I care to about that. Even crazier, since there was, oh, about nothing to do there, a friend and I used to ride our bikes near the tracks back along Hay Rd (this is around age 12 or so), from near the DuPont entrance, then northward to where the current-day park begins and a little beyond. Had I any clue what the eff I could have been exposing myself to, that would never have come close to happening.
On the flip side, I think visiting the park is OK, but don’t start digging!