Don't Let the Drunks Drive Again

I always thought that the most apropos metaphor for the Iraq War was that friends don't let friends drive drunk.  America had many friends back then (France, Canada, et al) that tried to get the neocon drunks in the Bush administration to give up the keys to the car.  Those were our true friends, but the Cheney/ Rumsfeld/Bolton chicken hawk coalition tried to turn them into enemies.

As expected, this same group of scoundrels that sent us to war over nonexistent weapons of mass destruction has reared up its ugly chicken hawk head over the latest Iran initiative.  It is astonishing to me that anyone still cares what they think about anything.  Other people are still cleaning up the mess they left in the Middle East.

You fear that we will be duped by Iran? Well, we were already duped (i.e., neo-conned) by you in 2003.  It's entirely possible that Iran is not to be trusted here. Well, then we have lost a few months and can renew sanctions or whatever else is needed.   That's a much preferable strategy than the chicken hawk willingness to send others off to die to satisfy their need for bluster and empty bravado.  You had eight years to "fix" the serious issues with Iran.  It's time to let someone sober drive the car.

Is Fox and Friends a Secret Parody?

From Hunter at the Daily Kos:

"What if Fox & Friends is actually a biting, tough-edged parody of the rest of the Fox News network, and the rest of us just haven't caught on yet? Elizabeth Hasselbeck hasn't been co-hosting the show for long, but she's already challenging Steve Doocy and the guy who isn't Steve Doocy in their years-running campaign to be known as The Dumb One."

Quote of the Day

"Hey Cohen—if it looks like a racist, talks like a racist, passes racist legislation, it ain't conventional at all—it's racist."

(Denise Oliver Velez, writing on the Daily Kos about Richard Cohen's disgusting column)

Another excerpt from her post (next to her picture):

This is what I look like. The result of an ancestry of a bicentennial of breeding farms and rape during the enslavement period on one side of the family, and a loving marriage between a white Kansan grandmother and a black grandfather from Tennessee on the other (whose marriage was illegal in many parts of the U.S. in 1915 when they wed).

Since we've been informed by Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen that the sight of "us" (and we number in the millions) makes racists he refuses to call racists gag—I suggest strongly that they complete the process.

Puke on.

 You really should read the entire post.  It's here.

Kevin Drum Is Right on as Usual

From Kevin Drum's blog.  As usual, he is mostly right on the mark.  Worth the read.

Quote of the Day

"The reason we have become a middle-class nation is because of the labor movement."

New York Mayor-Elect Bill de Blasio

Bill Gross

Bill Gross from Pimco--hardly a socialist--has this interesting take on taxes.  The whole article is worth the read, but thus section is particularly to the point:

Having benefited enormously via the leveraging of capital since the beginning of my career and having shared a decreasing percentage of my income thanks to Presidents Reagan and Bush 43 via lower government taxes, I now find my intellectual leanings shifting to the plight of labor. I often tell my wife Sue it’s probably a Kennedy-esque type of phenomenon. Having gotten rich at the expense of labor, the guilt sets in and I begin to feel sorry for the less well-off, writing very public Investment Outlooks that “dis” the success that provided me the soapbox in the first place. If your immediate reaction is to nod up and down, then give yourself some points in this intellectual tête-à-tête. Still, I would ask the Scrooge McDucks of the world who so vehemently criticize what they consider to be counterproductive, even crippling taxation of the wealthy in the midst of historically high corporate profits and personal income, to consider this: Instead of approaching the tax reform argument from the standpoint of what an enormous percentage of the overall income taxes the top 1% pay, consider how much of the national income you’ve been privileged to make. In the United States, the share of total pre-tax income accruing to the top 1% has more than doubled from 10% in the 1970s to 20% today. Admit that you, and I and others in the magnificent “1%” grew up in a gilded age of credit, where those who borrowed money or charged fees on expanding financial assets had a much better chance of making it to the big tent than those who used their hands for a living. Yes I know many of you money people worked hard as did I, and you survived and prospered where others did not. A fair economic system should always allow for an opportunity to succeed. Congratulations. Smoke that cigar, enjoy that Chateau Lafite 1989. But (mostly you guys) acknowledge your good fortune at having been born in the ‘40s, ‘50s or ‘60s, entering the male-dominated workforce 25 years later, and having had the privilege of riding a credit wave and a credit boom for the past three decades. You did not, as President Obama averred, “build that,” you did not create that wave. You rode it. And now it’s time to kick out and share some of your good fortune by paying higher taxes or reforming them to favor economic growth and labor, as opposed to corporate profits and individual gazillions. You’ll still be able to attend those charity galas and demonstrate your benevolence and philanthropic character to your admiring public. You’ll just have to write a little bit smaller check. Scrooge McDuck would complain but then he’s swimming in it, and can afford to duck paddle to a shallower end for a while. If you’re in the privileged 1%, you should be paddling right alongside and willing to support higher taxes on carried interest, and certainly capital gains readjusted to existing marginal income tax rates. Stanley Druckenmiller and Warren Buffett have recently advocated similar proposals. The era of taxing “capital” at lower rates than “labor” should now end. [emphasis in the original]