Let's get one thing straight about what President Obama said yesterday about raising revenue as part of a deficit reduction plan that he submitted to the joint committee from Congress that's going to tell us all how much dog food we have to eat in order to survive the economic apocalypse: He did not just say, "Rich people pay more." What he did say was
that he will "veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to pay their fair share." You got that? You can change Medicare, he said, but the rich and the huge have to pay more, too.
If that's class warfare, as the GOP is howling, or warfare of any kind, it's like saying that the United States began World War II by telling the Nazis, "Okay, you can have Europe. But America is off limits." Or it's like getting a divorce and agreeing to give up the house, but you get to keep the cat and one of your kidneys. In other words, it's the least he could do, but in our turd-filled litter box of political discourse, to propose what amounts to less than what
Reagan asked of the wealthy and big corporations is progressive. (By the way, you don't get the litter box with the cat.)
Indeed, if anything, the motherfuckin' tea leaves are aligning towards actual class warfare in this country, as
poll after
poll show that a large majority of Americans think, "Well, shit, yeah, rich people can pay more. So why the fuck don't they?" If we're not back in a recession yet, but 60% or more of people believe that the wealthy should pay as much as they were paying in 2000. If Congress cuts Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security without making millionaires pay more, then they may as well get the stormtroopers ready for the actual unemployed and starving class warriors to kick some ass. Rich people like Warren Buffet and Bill Clinton understand this. Rich assholes like the
dicksack from Congress who said that he's only got a few hundred thousand dollars left to feed his family think they can convince the teabag yahoos to take to the front lines for them.
But none of this pierces the veil of stupid and greedy that modern conservatives live under. For example:
-On CNN's
Morning Attempt to Stay Relevant today, a viewer emailed in one of the GOP's anti-tax talking points, which was read on the air: "All I know is, if I made a million dollars a year and the fed was already taking $400,000 of it, I would be ticked. Where is the incentive for these people to make more money just to have it taken away?" So "Jody" believes that someone who makes a million dollars, when given an opportunity to make more, is going to say, "Oh, fuck it. I'll just have to pay part of it in the higher tax rate." Has any millionaire ever said that ever?
-In one of the whiniest columns the Rude Pundit's ever read, David Brooks
writes in the
New York Times that he's personally offended and hurt that President Obama proposed something that could be used as fodder for a campaign for, you know, President. Of course, he spouts outright bullshit: "(Obama) claimed we can afford future Medicare costs if we raise taxes on the rich." While it'd be awesome if Obama said that, sadly, as detailed above, it ain't what he said. But Brooks is pouty. "I'm a sap," he says repeatedly, like a pimply-faced high schooler whose date dumped him at the homecoming dance. Someone get Brooks a tit to suckle.
Seriously, it's easily one of the worst things the Rude Pundit's read in the
Times in the last few years, and that includes William Kristol's stint there. Brooks actually says, "We’re not going to simplify the tax code, but by God Obama’s going to raise taxes on rich people who give to charity! We’ve got to do something to reduce the awful philanthropy surplus plaguing this country!" Those exclamation points are his. First of all, do we actually have rich people giving so much to charity that they'd say, "Oh, screw the cancer sufferers and the poor kids and the opera. I gotta pay a slightly higher marginal tax rate on my income above a million bucks and a bit more on my capital gains"? Second of all, fuck this guy.
- Oh, and fuck this fat bastard, too. Mark Penn, who is more to blame for Hillary Clinton's failed candidacy than anyone, also
scolds Obama for not "bringing the country together rather than dividing it through class warfare." Blaming Obama for dividing the country is like charging a rape victim with assault because the rapist got a black eye during the rape. Or blaming pie for Mark Penn's enormous girth.
Tomorrow: The GOP freaks out. For good reason.
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