Watching the temperature at the Daily Kos, I realized you have to take cover there because the ozone layer contains a harmful ultraviolet rays.
I also realized...
39% of Daily Kos Makes $100K or more. 75% of Daily Kos makes $60K or more. 90% of Daily Kos Makes $30K or more. No wonder the $2 million People whose Unemployment benefit has run out don't have a voice in the community to support what this Administration is try to do for them.
You can put Anthony Weiner in that 39% as well who is more interested in making political point than getting things done. In fact, I will ask where have you been all this time and before the November election but instead make a cowardly attention seeking noise when the POTUS tries to help 2 million people while you try to keep them hostage to score a political point. Some of you feckless Democrats in Congress seat on their asses without even throwing a fighting punch and kick the field goal on the 2nd down and now try to ridicule the Administration for kicking it on the 3rd down. I guess Mr. opportunistic whining Weiner want to blame the President like he blamed him for not drawing the line in the HCR debate. Bullshit!
Crossposted from The People's View
The Administrations' deal with Republican leaders to extend the Bush tax rates for two more years has been reached. As part of the deal, there will be a 13 month extension of unemployment benefits for over 2 million Americans whose UI has run out since Nov. 30, 2010.
Along with the extension, the arrangement includes a 2-percent reduction in payroll taxes from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent that will help employees keep about $120 Billion in their pockets for a year replacing the President's tax credit introduced as part of the 2009 stimulus package. It also included extending from last year's stimulus bill the Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Credit, and American Opportunity Tax Credit. Moreover, the plan includes a 35 percent tax on estates (Death Tax) of more than $5 million, allows business to write off investments entirely for 2011 and keeps the middle class from paying the Alternative Minimum Tax - designed to keep the wealthy from escaping taxes - through 2011.
Here are more tax cut facts:
- The American Opportunity Tax Credit, which gives students and families up to $2,500 in tax savings to help pay for college tuition and other expenses. The AOTC and other tuition benefits have helped more than 12.5 million students and their families pay for college, an increase in tax benefits for higher education of more than 90 percent from the year before.
- The Earned Income Tax Credit, which helps moderate-income working families make ends meet. The Recovery Act increased the credit for families with three or more children, bringing the maximum amount to $5,657.
- The Child Tax Credit, which helps low-and moderate-income families with children. More families are benefitting from the child tax credit under the Recovery Act, which reduced the minimum amount of earned income used to calculate the additional child tax credit to $3,000 from $12,550.
- COBRA and Unemployment Benefits:For those who lost their jobs in the recession, to help them get back on their feet, the Recovery Act provided a 65 percent tax credit to help cover the cost of health care and made the first $2,400 in unemployment benefits tax-free, when normally 100 percent of those benefits are taxable.
- Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Incentives: Taxpayers are eligible for up to $1,500 in tax credits for making some energy-efficiency improvements to their homes such as adding insulation and installing energy efficient windows.
So, how bad is it to extend the Bush's tax cut for two more years for those making under 250k (which covers about 95% of Americans) in exchange to make the 79% of Americans who favor it happy.
This is about two more years of the same tax rate as the last 10 years to help over 2 million people with unemployment insurance benefit to keep a roof over their head.
Ok, if I read this correctly, the President went with trying to make 79% (53% + 26%) of those polled happy and to making sure that 2 million households have Unemployment benefit. (Anybody home?)
Frankly, I wonder how many folks are willing to say HELL NO to Unemployment Insurance Extension, NO to a 2-percent reduction in payroll taxes, NO to extending Earned Income Tax Credit, NO to Child Credit, No to American Opportunity Tax Credit, NO to a 35 percent tax on estates (Death) Tax up to $5 million for two years, NO to allowing business to write off investments entirely for 2011 to spur the economy and NO to keeping the middle class from paying the Alternative Minimum Tax?
Worth watching the President speak on Tax Cuts and Unemployment Extension:
If you say HELL NO to this deal and say let it rip - NO EXTENSION at ALL, then you still have not found yourself.
Let me try a different tact to see if you can find yourself with these maps and flash light about how President Obama's thoughts are in display here.
This president’s priorities are not always about doing what is popular at Daily Kos or HuffingtonPost like whining Weiner's priority but doing something that effect the livelihood of the vast majority of Americans despite all the screaming, detestably incitements and all the Fuck Obama blessings from the puritan corner. Well, that is just the cream of the crop...just wait for the next few days about the vilification on the man rather than the Republicans and some Democratic wanna be Senators who actually killed the House passed plan.
But again, I have said it all along, a true reality based community will be screaming for reasonable action like calling our Representatives to seek commitment asking to ensure that DADT repeal, the DREAM Act and the Start Treaty legislation are included as part of the deal. Here...
CALL YOUR SENATORS AND YOUR REPRESENTATIVE and ASK THEM to include these three action items along with the tax extension and UI extension plan.
Congressional Switchboard: (202) 224-3121
I have said this before in another diary but I will repeat it. I believe as progressives what we must understand about Obama is that he is not reactionary. Simon Critchley puts his wish list of the kind of persona he would like to see in Obama from The American Void article:
He [Obama] confesses early on that he is not someone who easily gets worked up about things. But sometimes I rather wish he would. Anger is the emotion that produces motion, the mood that moves the subject to act.
I know that is how some feel but that is just not Obama. Rather, Critchley continues...
At the core of The Audacity of Hope is someone who lives at a distance, someone distanced from himself and from others and craving a bond, a commitment to bind him together with other Americans and to bind Americans together. There is a true horror vacuum in Obama, a terror of loneliness and nothingness. He yearns for an unconditional commitment that will shape his subjectivity and fill the vacuum. He desires contact with some plenitude, an experience of fullness that might still his sense of loneliness, fill his isolation, silence his endless doubt, and assuage his feelings of abandonment.
But perhaps this opacity is Obama’s political genius: that it is precisely the enigmatic, inert character of Obama that seems to generate the desire to identify with him, indeed to love him. Perhaps it is that sense of internal distance that people see in him and in themselves. Obama recognizes this capacity in an intriguing and profound remark when he writes, "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." He is a mirror that reflects back whatever the viewer wants to see. Somehow our loneliness and doubt become focused and fused with his. Obama’s desire for union with a common good becomes unified with ours. For that moment, and maybe only for that moment, we believe, we hope. It is a strangely restrained ecstasy, but an ecstasy nonetheless.
Chris Hayes wrotediscussing Obama's pragmatism:
Pragmatism in common usage may mean simply a practical approach to problems and affairs. But it's also the name of the uniquely American school of philosophy whose doctrine is that truth is pre-eminently to be tested by the practical consequences of belief. What unites the two senses of the word is a shared skepticism toward certainties derived from abstractions-one that is welcome and bracing after eight years of a failed, faith-based presidency.
Believing in a bi-partisanship is not being an anti-democrat. It is being inclusive.
If the map offered is too complicated and the flash light is dim and about to go out, I recommend watching this clip as I am certain that Obama will take your frustrations personal and will try to finding your a$$self for you...