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There is no middle class in America [any more]
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Aug 13, 2013 23:22
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| # ? May 15, 2024 16:02 |
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BiggerBoat posted:That seems to be the main symptom of absorbing too much right wing media. Things are just assumed to be true (Obama is a commie socialist, taxes are bad, America is a christian nation, ACORN commits voter fraud, media is liberally biased, they're gonna take our guns, Obamacare is a government takeover, Benghazi). I mentioned it a few posts back. If you're up to really going into mouth of the monster, swing by the Sean Hannity forums at some point. Reading them posting about the 'sheeple' while aping, regurgitating, and making GBS threads out verbatim and unquestionably everything they've heard on their favorite talk programs is an amazing display of irony.
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Aug 13, 2013 23:22
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So with Santorium also saying that there is no class system in America is that the new Republican attempt from the Hivemind to fool me into thinking that Generic Rich Guy shares my same problems and I shouldn't vote against
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Aug 13, 2013 23:26
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I'm torn between laughing at republicans for attacking their fiction of the middle class which is a key part of their success and being terrified that they might actually be able to convince people that despite their crippling poverty, everyone* in America is rich! *offer only applies to white males
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Aug 13, 2013 23:32
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Yeah it's pretty obvious someone passed a new strategy memo to the nutcase wing. And gawrsh isn't it just amazing that Herman Cain deep down in his heart always knew he'd be a millionaire pizza baron? And he knows you would be too if you would just stop all that negative thinking about how much money you have and how much money he has and what the difference is. Nothing good ever came of paying attention to those people with all the money, so just don't do that.Raskolnikov38 posted:I'm torn between laughing at republicans for attacking their fiction of the middle class which is a key part of their success and being terrified that they might actually be able to convince people that despite their crippling poverty, everyone* in America is rich! Well they did try and pass around a flyer that said "Hey if you take the whole world into account, you are part of the 1% too so shut up." There was of course no addressing the fact that they apperantly just admitted that you're supposed to feel bad about that. Or that in that scenario it makes our 1% magnitudes worse than they were just previous to this new talking point. Intel&Sebastian fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Aug 13, 2013 |
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Aug 13, 2013 23:35
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Parachute posted:You should really check out "Hot Coffee" (it's on Netflix streaming now) if you haven't watched it. I can't remember if you had commented about it in the Netflix thread. I just watched this because of your comment and now I'm loving livid. I had no idea.
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Aug 13, 2013 23:39
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Have you seen my apex seals? I seem to have lost them.
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I can understand being a white person and having no idea racism is still a thing since you don't really get the obvious negatives of it affecting you on a daily basis and TV and the news really aren't going to explain it. However you have to be really, really dumb to think that the only thing separating you and Bill Gates or whoever is a "first class outlook."
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Aug 13, 2013 23:42
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Wait so after umpteen dozen years of morons droning about the middle class and how we have to pass these tax cuts for the middle class and how government spending will hurt the middle class, suddenly the middle class is a fabrication? gently caress I have been stripped of the sole anchoring point for my perception of reality and now the world appears to me only as things happening for no reason in a vacuum.
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Aug 13, 2013 23:49
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Good Citizen posted:It's especially hilarious considering the entire book is about the subversion of democracy in favor of constitutional republicanism, which people on the right wing seem especially fond of in the last several years for some reason It seems like it's built on the same logic as "Lincoln was a Republican" and "Democrats were the ones fighting against emancipation", ergo, Democrats suck, Republicans are not racist and so forth. Like Lincoln could get a sniff on a modern GOP ticket. Also, don't recent polls show that the public supports gay marriage (and universal health care)? PrinceRandom posted:Maybe to, in the future, make a "You have to file taxes to vote" law? To keep 47% away? I don't really like imposing conspiratorial thoughts on people but he seems close to a "own property to vote" guy anyways. Pretty sure most of the 47% file, they just usually don't end up owing anything. Dr.Zeppelin posted:I know this is true on a federal level but I think at least a few states have raised taxes, especially sales taxes, in light of falling revenues and a stealth desire to make the tax code less progressive. It's funny how "states' rights" is such a big deal to conservatives until the minute they find out a state is exercising its right to do something they don't personally approve of. The overall effective tax rates on almost everyone are the lowest they've been in 50 some odd years. BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 00:10
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They're sooooooo close to literally calling us temporarily embarassed millionaires. Just do it. Do it. DO IT!
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Aug 14, 2013 00:16
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Man this is totally going to spawn another bunch of sob-story op-eds begging us to consider the plight of the vanishing American HENRY, isn't it? Bill and Muffy are just scraping by on $300,000 a year, being forced to choose between their children's boarding school and their twice-annual vacation in Europe. You see, America? They're just like you.
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Aug 14, 2013 00:30
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Sure, we're better than you. But do you have any idea how much being better than you costs? The nanny and driver wages alone...
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Aug 14, 2013 00:34
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BiggerBoat posted:
I'm of the opinion that a lot of Republicans don't really know how the tax code works. My mom was trying to tell me she payed almost 40% in income tax and she makes less than $50,000 a year and that there really should be a fair tax system so those poor moochers would stop leaching off of her.. I think the poor have been so demonized that people who could legitimately be considered lower-income/sub middle-class can't accept that they aren't actually the ones that Republicans cater after.
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Aug 14, 2013 00:58
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PrinceRandom posted:I'm of the opinion that a lot of Republicans don't really know how the tax code works. My mom was trying to tell me she payed almost 40% in income tax and she makes less than $50,000 a year and that there really should be a fair tax system so those poor moochers would stop leaching off of her.. I remember, back in high school when I took a sociology class, the teacher told us all to close our eyes and not attempt to look at each other after explaining social class and wealth and so forth. She asked everybody that was lower class to raise their hands, then middle, then upper. She counted the hands and later told us that EVERYBODY thought they were middle class. Even people that were very very obviously lower or upper. I was very lower class and sitting right next to a girl that was the child of parents that made like $250,000 a year. We both thought we were middle class.
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Aug 14, 2013 01:36
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quote:Herman Cain said: As if any right-wing "journalist" would tell them if they were? WTF is this poo poo?
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Aug 14, 2013 01:39
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PrinceRandom posted:I'm of the opinion that a lot of Republicans don't really know how the tax code works. My mom was trying to tell me she payed almost 40% in income tax and she makes less than $50,000 a year and that there really should be a fair tax system so those poor moochers would stop leaching off of her.. Filing as single, with no dependents and one personal exemption, no other deductions/credits, estimated tax on $50,000 is $5929. 11.9% Add in FICA (which isn't income tax, but most idiots don't have any idea how taxes break down) of 7.65%, and you get a total effective federal tax rate of ~20% Tell her she's off in her estimation of her tax rate by 100%, and should probably not handle any money in the future, because she's clearly incompetent. Fake edit: I like how she thinks she pays a higher percentage in federal income tax than THE HIGHEST MARGINAL TAX BRACKET for federal income tax. That's a special level of ignorance right there. Edit edit: Sorry, not to bag on your mother specifically. It's not just her, obviously, there are SO GODDAMNED MANY people who haven't the foggiest idea how numbers relate to one another in taxland. CarterUSM fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 01:42
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CarterUSM posted:Filing as single, with no dependents and one personal exemption, no other deductions/credits, estimated tax on $50,000 is $5929. 11.9% Yeah, this came about as we were talking about returning to the Clinton Tax rates. To be fair, she was talking about in the 90's when she co-owned a business with my step-dad (just a paint and carpet store). But she still never even approached the top rate and the store was hardly close to being profitable and it closed a little after her and my step-dad married. So I think they may have approached 30% (with buisness taxes and whatever, they were the only employees), they still weren't being oppressively taxed at the maximum rate. I should of clarified I suppose. But the point still stands that even now, when she is on disability and my step-dad is working at a not even managerial level. She still is firm in the belief that they would benefit personally from a flat/fair tax system. Edit: It also doesn't help that the GOP essentially racialized poverty so that no good self-respecting white person could ever be considered poor. That only happens to those... "inner city folks." PrinceRandom fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 01:52
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Radish posted:I can understand being a white person and having no idea racism is still a thing since you don't really get the obvious negatives of it affecting you on a daily basis and TV and the news really aren't going to explain it. However you have to be really, really dumb to think that the only thing separating you and Bill Gates or whoever is a "first class outlook." So now the Republican social mobility message has basically become The Secret?
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Aug 14, 2013 04:28
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Fulchrum posted:So now the Republican social mobility message has basically become The Secret? If people will pay real money for this brand of world-class bullshit, they probably won't object too strenuously to it being beaten over the head with it for free.
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Aug 14, 2013 11:57
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Edit: poo poo, wrong thread. My bad.
Hulk Krogan fucked around with this message at 14:06 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 13:56
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Good Citizen posted:Mark Levin's liberty amendments book came out today. Here's what I've been able to grab so far: quote:--Requiring Congress to publish the final text of any proposed legislation at least 30 days before holding a final vote on it. EDIT: radical meme posted:I'm just amazed by the idea that those Founders 220 years ago that came up with the three fifths compromise were brilliant but, those guys 100 years ago who passed the 17th Amendment were complete fools and probably communist, socialist, marxist, nazis. So even though the original was perfect, we just need these 11 amendments, that no Founder would have ever agreed to, to make it even more perfect.
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Aug 14, 2013 16:42
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HootTheOwl posted:This one wouldn't be bad either if legislators actually read legislation instead of having lobbiests just write and tell them how to vote. But they don't so why bother. It would just delay legislation excessively, if only because every time legislation was amended you'd have to restart the 30 day clock.
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Aug 14, 2013 16:44
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HootTheOwl posted:This one wouldn't be bad either if legislators actually read legislation instead of having lobbiests just write and tell them how to vote. But they don't so why bother. Bills are mostly a pile of legalese describing how the new laws fit in and interact with the laws that we already have on the books. Legislators just read the bill summary or have an aide describe changes as they come up, it saves time.
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Aug 14, 2013 16:57
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:It would just delay legislation excessively, if only because every time legislation was amended you'd have to restart the 30 day clock. Zeroisanumber posted:Bills are mostly a pile of legalese describing how the new laws fit in and interact with the laws that we already have on the books. Legislators just read the bill summary or have an aide describe changes as they come up, it saves time. Like I said, I'd be for it if people actually read bills, but they don't.
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Aug 14, 2013 17:16
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Peggy Noonan thinks President Obama should tell people to get off the case of the rodeo clown that impersonated him in Missouri.Peggy Noonan posted:Let me suggest a classy Obama move that might go over well. From his Vineyard vacation spot he should have the press office issue a release saying his reaction to finding out a rodeo clown was rudely spoofing him, was, “So what?” Say he loves free speech, including inevitably derision directed at him, and he does not wish for the Missouri state fair to fire the guy, and hopes those politicians (unctuously, excessively, embarrassingly) damning the clown and the crowd would pipe down and relax. This would be graceful and nice, wouldn’t it? He would never do it. He gives every sign of being a person who really believes he shouldn’t be made fun of, and if he is it’s probably racially toned, because why else would you make fun of him? I'm eagerly awaiting her reaction when a video is posted of someone in a "rich old white woman" mask wearing a designer cocktail dress and chugging from a bottle of champagne, downing pills from a comically oversized bottle reading "VALIUM" and cavorting with a 14-inch dildo labeled with the words "The Great Communicator". It's just free speech, and who doesn't love that?
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Aug 14, 2013 17:51
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Very, very classy for the President of the United States to take a public position on the fate of a rodeo clown.
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Aug 14, 2013 17:55
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If I wanted a president who spent time wondering what rodeo clowns are up to these days I would hop in my time machine and go back 8 years, Peggy.
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Aug 14, 2013 17:57
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Those bulls acted stupidly.
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Aug 14, 2013 17:57
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Is there any truth in that article about the ACA and foster parents?
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Aug 14, 2013 17:59
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skaboomizzy posted:Peggy Noonan thinks President Obama should tell people to get off the case of the rodeo clown that impersonated him in Missouri. "President Holds Press Conference on Issue to Show Just How Little He Cares About It"
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Aug 14, 2013 18:18
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Rush has spent at least 45 minutes of his program today on the rodeo clown story in his trademark rage-a-thon  . He even invoked C.S. Lewis quote 'The devil can't stand being mocked'. Truly the US is just like Nazi Germany when a rodeo clown is persecuted so 
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Aug 14, 2013 18:46
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kik2dagroin posted:Rush has spent at least 45 minutes of his program today on the rodeo clown story in his trademark rage-a-thon Has Obama himself even said anything? As far as I'm aware it's pretty much just been a whole bunch of people on both sides of the aisle going "hey guys not cool" and then a few people on the far right crying Godwin.
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Aug 14, 2013 18:48
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skaboomizzy posted:Peggy Noonan thinks President Obama should tell people to get off the case of the rodeo clown that impersonated him in Missouri. I dig on how she is sure to mention he is vacationing in a VINEYARD. I love this idea that the President of the United States is somehow forbidden from any level of comfort and decorum befitting the President of the United States. You know if Obama vacationed in a lovely apartment in Chicago or something they would give him poo poo for not "appearing presidential."
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Aug 14, 2013 18:57
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PrinceRandom posted:I'm of the opinion that a lot of Republicans don't really know how the tax code works. My mom was trying to tell me she payed almost 40% in income tax and she makes less than $50,000 a year and that there really should be a fair tax system so those poor moochers would stop leaching off of her.. I do remember seeing a chart or report several years ago that suggested that most people had an approximately 30-40% effective tax rate once you consider sales tax, local taxes, etc. Anyone know what I'm talking about? Obviously not the same as "income tax" but maybe she's not so far off.
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Aug 14, 2013 19:04
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quiggy posted:Has Obama himself even said anything? As far as I'm aware it's pretty much just been a whole bunch of people on both sides of the aisle going "hey guys not cool" and then a few people on the far right crying Godwin. Yeah at the end of the day Obama is the president and this other guy is an idiot that gets chased by cows for a living. I somehow doubt Barry's burning down phone lines trying to put out a statement regarding A Literal Clown Lmao.
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Aug 14, 2013 19:09
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I dig on how she is sure to mention he is vacationing in a VINEYARD. It's Martha's Vineyard, not an actual vineyard.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...5f84_story.html quote:“I think everyone is excited and perfectly willing to put up with the road closure here,” Jay Kirch, 81, said as he sat in the shade at a picnic table. “I do believe he needs protection and privacy.” Relaxed old guy lives on island, has reasonable views. 
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Aug 14, 2013 19:16
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It wasn't the fact that it was a rodeo clown, it was the fact that the announcer and another clown whipped the crowd into an orgiastic rage-cum by crooning luridly into the microphone. rednecks posted:We're going to stomp Obama now. As soon as this bull comes out, Obama, don't you move. He's going to getcha, getcha getcha, getcha. That's not spooky at all, and has noooo undertones whatsoever.
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Aug 14, 2013 19:18
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SedanChair posted:It wasn't the fact that it was a rodeo clown, it was the fact that the announcer and another clown whipped the crowd into an orgiastic rage-cum by crooning luridly into the microphone. No argument it's mega gross, but what really can the president say to that. Did he say anything in response to those awful zombie targets that were called, like, Not Zombie Obama for Shooting Purposes? At most, they get to have a chat and a handshake with the Secret Service. Maybe if Obama is having a really bad day and decides to go for total Nixon overdrive, they get put on a list somewhere. But actively engaging with shitheads like that doesn't really strike me as something the president does or should do. e. I'd make an exception for active engagement if it involved Obama showing up in person and being all "hmm, I don't think I 'get' it, Bob. Do you mind explaining the joke?" paranoid randroid fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 19:33
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I know it comes off extremely Maherish, but if it really warrants a response (it doesn't) I would just say, "yeah, there's a reason why it's called flyover country," and leave it at that.
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Aug 14, 2013 20:24
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Phone posted:I know it comes off extremely Maherish, but if it really warrants a response (it doesn't) I would just say, "yeah, there's a reason why it's called flyover country," and leave it at that. Hi, I live in Lincoln, Nebraska, and hate that expression. Omaha and Lincoln aren't as liberal as they could be, but they're not backwater, BFE.
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Aug 14, 2013 20:35
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