Open Thread

Republicans always talk about the 47% who don't pay taxes, and are now saying taxes must be raised on the poor so that they pay their fair share. It never occurs to them that maybe they don't make enough money to even pay tax. Meanwhile, those who make hundreds of millions if not billions are also not paying any taxes, and yet the Republicans are fighting tooth and nail to make sure it stays that way.

Bruce Bartlett totals up the damage former President George W. Bush did to the country's fiscal health. He finds that if the Clintonian policies had continued over the course of the 2000's (i.e. had President Gore been sworn into office rather than the usurper), then the United States would have had a budget surplus of $5.6 trillion at the end of Fiscal Year 2011.

Framing wizards George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling, authors of The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic, have some advice for the Obama campaign, and really, for all liberals, Democrats and progressives everywhere.

As if you would need a reason to not read Politico, here is another one:  a Politico reporter gets canned for telling someone on MSNBC that Mitt Romney is more comfortable around white people.  How do you get fired for making an observation that pretty much everybody will make:

Williams noted that Romney’s preference for Fox & Friends, and similarly partisan settings, was interesting because it was “unscripted and it’s the only time they let Mitt off the leash.”He made the point that for Romeny to be successful he needs to broaden the range of people with whom he interacts.

Williams: Romney is very, very comfortable, it seems, with people who are like him. That’s one of the reasons why he seems so stiff and awkward in some town hall settings, why he can’t relate to people other than that. But when he comes on Fox and Friends, they’re like him, they’re white folks who are very much relaxed in their own company.

Forgot. It is a firing offense for political reporters to tell the truth about conservatives.

The Lies of the Lying Liar, Willard Mittens Romney, Pathological Liar Extraordinaire.

"We remember the president’s own party had a super majority in both houses for his first two years."

A number of the more purist liberals also believe this. A super majority is Constitutionally defined as two thirds, or 67%. The truth is the Democrats never enjoyed a super majority in the House of Representatives nor in the Senate.

The lies of the lying liar named Willard Mittens Romney, pathological liar extraordinaire, are so legion and numerous that we can fill every open thread from now until the election and have room to spare, only going on what he has said so far in the campaign. So that is exactly what we are going to do.

ABC News has a handy flowchart showing the many ways in which the Supreme Court could rule on the Obamacare case. A ruling is expected either on Monday, June 18 or Monday, June 25. And what did the special election in Arizona's 8th Congressional District tell us about November? It tells us that we can be outspent, and the Republicans can outrageously lie in their ads, but so long as we have the right message (and we did), we will win. Remember, the Arizona 8th CD is a Lean GOP district. And it is in the insane state of Arizona. And the Democratic message won.

A new DailyKos/SEIU/PPP poll finds that 49% of registered voters nationwide think Republicans are "intentionally stalling efforts to jumpstart the economy" to ensure President Obama's defeat for re-election. This is largely in line with a Washington Post/ABC News poll released in November that found 50% of Americans nationwide agree with the statement that President Obama is "making a good faith effort to deal with the country's economic problems, but the Republicans in Congress are playing politics by blocking his proposals." That's not exactly the sabotage question, but it's close. The problem of this election is whether the electorate will reward such treasonous action.