patrick.net

Michelle Bachman to announce tomorrow.

Now that we have Male Republican look-alikes, we also seem to have Female Republican Clones.

QUIZ: Can you tell Bachman and Palin apart?

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/take-the-bachmann-palin-challenge-can-you-tell-them-apart-20110609

As a future first time buyer I would much rather pay a larger down payment, but an overall lower price for the home. Home prices will drop to reflect the drop in demand, just as they increased exponentially when available credit expanded in the early 2000's. Home prices falling wouldn't be a bad thing, it would finally make homes affordable once again. Easy access to credit has inflated home prices and pushed the lower to middle income borrowers to stretch as far as possible in their budget to be able to afford the monthly payment. The way to make homes affordable is not through credit, but real drops in prices. In the end we haven’t helped these lower to middle income borrowers, we’ve trapped them under a mountain of debt, but pretended that we helped them because we made it easier to sign a piece of paper.

However, I think the market should set its own rules without government mandates and the government should just exit the market altogether so I fundamentally disagree with the QRM rules, but we live in a market where the government still backs loans at 3.5% up to 729k, and the fed meanwhile is keeping interest rates artificially low extending easy money to the banks. In a truly free market I don’t think the banks would even consider less than 20%, or if they did as during the housing boom, they would be allowed to fail. But we don’t live in that world.

shrekgrinch says

elliemae says

People don’t trust Mormons as a whole.

You mean LIBERALS mostly when defining ‘people’. Hell, LIBERALS don’t trust many people who are religious, period.

You say that like there are no religious liberals. Or that it is not the right wing christians most opposed to mormons. Sounds like someone has linked...
shrekgrinch says

false facts with even worse bullshit

...whatever.

Transparent

Please specify the bullshit you mean. Otherwise this thread is just a personal insult, not a discussion.

Well said AF. And for future reference, PLEASE, if you can't be bothered to eat me in a polite and orderly manner, then don't bother to eat me at all.

And we should Bomb Libya, while acting polite while watching Bahrain act out even more horrid atrocities on their citizens. And we actually occupy a military presence in Bahrain.

We dont have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. Its about time we made cuts.

The democrats had OVER 700 DAYS to pass a budget when they controlled both houses. They failed. Why? Because they are worse than the loser republicans that controlled everything for a few years before them.

When Obama was elected, the dems won both houses and the economy started to tank on Bush's way out I had a mental picture of a hole in the bottom of a canoe. During the Obama mania crap I saw all over the place I thought to myself, "They are going to solve this by blowing a bigger hole in the boat."

Sure enough...

It's Fox New's fault.

P.S. I taste fouler than I sound.

You left out Rick Perry who will probably run. I'm visiting family in Texas and asked my brother in law what he thinks of him:

"I don't know how he keeps getting elected!"

Same question to my Dad:

"Well, Arkansas got rid of Clinton that way"

I'm positively sweet. Eat me!

Where is Apocalypsefuck? There should be a comment about the rise of the New Cannibalistic Dawn since the Republicans are Hell bent on bringing about economic armaggedon in order to win in 2012. Win at any cost.

As the Good Book says, "Eat thy neighbor as thou wouldst eat thyself."

Most Americans are content to play the part of Penelope Pitstop and play into the hands of the Republicons.

APOCALYPSEFUCK says

It’s all very Osmond Mormonism, no savage group copulation and good stuff like that. The Mormon candidates might as well be Catholic.

No, if the Mormon candidates were Catholics they'd be able to drink alcoholic and caffinated beverages, dance, smoke, and gamble. I think you might have meant to say that they might as well be Southern Baptists.

leoj707 says

APOCALYPSEFUCK says

OK, granted - but he did institute beef stew Thursdays at McMurdo Station - and many do indeed argue he was unipolar. Or was he unibrow?

elliemae says

APOCALYPSEFUCK says

Republican?

I thought Lincoln was bipolar.

I don’t think he ever explored the Arctic. His wife, on the other hand, nuttier than a fruitcake.
Eschew Obfuscation

Hmm… yeah the bi-s are getting mixed up here. His wife was the bipolar one, Lincoln was the bisexual.
Cute Ganesha

Are you sure? I grew up in The Land of Lincoln and I was taught that he was fruitier than a nutcake and that the missus was bi-curious.

Let's just nuke all of them until they glow. We could use a few new glass ashtrays here in the Land of Kush.

APOCALYPSEFUCK says

OK, this sounds like a contemporary conservative: Closeted gay runs around with guys while his wife melts down at home alone in a crushing descent into madness, pretty much a working definition of a Republican congressman.
leoj707 says

Hmm… yeah the bi-s are getting mixed up here. His wife was the bipolar one, Lincoln was the bisexual.

Wow, that is the most compelling argument yet for what political party Lincoln would fit in today.

Yeah, on the olther hand, modern Democrats send dirty pictures to and have affairs with consenting adult women. Oh the horror and shame!

simchaland says

Are you sure? I grew up in The Land of Lincoln and I was taught that he was fruitier than a nutcake and that the missus was bi-curious.

Well, I was saying that kind of tongue in cheek, running with the "bi" theme.

So, I would not say that I am "sure", but I think that often people like to put absolute labels on others (particularly important historical figures), laying "claim" that they are one of their own (aka = the log cabin republicans). Sexual identity can be a complicated thing, and I think that bisexuality often gets shorted by both gays and straights.

Lincoln was most likely into guys at a higher degree than he was into women, and I think that he was perhaps bisexual rather than "gay" or "straight", but I am not sure.

Just for full disclosure I am not a bisexual and trying to "lay claim" to Lincoln, that is just what I see as the most likely scenario.

Leoj708, I was being tongue in cheek, sort of. Lol...

I was building on our humorous digression. Don't ruin it with serious historical analysis.

You are encouraged to continue with hysterical analysis.

If Lincoln was as bisexual as he was bipolar, then Mrs. Lincoln was bi-curious.

I don't think either one of them was bi-coastal.

If you ever drove A20 (thank god they finally finished the Millau viaduct, no more 20k+ traffic jams at the gorge du tarn) or A7 in the summer you would quickly realize very few people fly. Makes memorial day driving at the Jersey shore seem like a walk in the park.

I don't think it's better or worse, just different. Most Americans have the option of simpler less materialistic lives if they really wanted to.

Ever watch the show where they clean out peoples houses after people just walked away and let the bank have the house? Just amazing. Closets full of expensive cloths, every electronic gadget know to man, every top end kitchen appliance ever made, 4000 sq feet of high end furniture, etc., etc.. You have to work really hard to actually pay for that stuff, or even to make the credit card payments after you charge it all. It's a choice people make.

simchaland says

APOCALYPSEFUCK says

It’s all very Osmond Mormonism, no savage group copulation and good stuff like that. The Mormon candidates might as well be Catholic.

No, if the Mormon candidates were Catholics they’d be able to drink alcoholic and caffinated beverages, dance, smoke, and gamble. I think you might have meant to say that they might as well be Southern Baptists.
I’m a proud Gemorran

You forgot about catholics and little boys. Mormons are restricted to molesting little girls, but they supposed to marry them first.

shrekgrinch says

While most small business owners are not in that category, most of the people who will get hit at $250,000 are small business owners.

Statistics or proof of any kind that this is true or is this just more shrek verbal flatulence????

wormwood says

Global Warming = Climate Change

I think that was for the dimbulbs who think one day of snow or cold weather disproves global warming. And, it is a fact that weather systems are complex; ie general warming trends impact other aspects of weather, such as hurricanes, and other the duration and severity of other storms.

wormwood says

Liberal = Progressive

Rebranding makes sense. You have proven in another thread that there are many who have no clue that liberal is a more nuanced and general term than the right would like it to be. They have spent billions trying to convince the idiot masses that lberalism is about weak defense, and free handouts for the lazy - when in fact it has always been about progress.

wormwood says

Illegal immigrant = Undocumented Worker (yeah right, more like another Democratic voter)

Last time I checked, these people don't vote. But yes, their children, their grandchildren, their great grandchildren, their great great great grandchildren and so on, do vote.

wormwood says

Marcus says “If it weren’t so tragic, it would be funny.”

You mean the unsustainable tragedy of entitlement programs?

No, I mean the "starve the beast" extremely wasteful borrow and spend policies of the republicans. And also the lie that they will say now regarding progressive tax rates, even ones that only take us back to 2000 rates.

The term "starve the beast" goes back to the Reagan era. Ironically, David Stockman is now a proponent of massive tax increases.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

they should raise taxes on capital gains (a lot), not income.

wormwood says

You mean our great grand parents and parents who immigrated legally?

Not that you make sense but fyi, if you go back to the time of my grandparents or further, there were NO limits. That is before the 1920s, there were no immigration limits.

wormwood says

Scare tactics for government power grabs.

In wormworld, I reckon this passes as a dissertation. Compelling argument there ww. I suppose after you wrote that phrase you thought to yourself, "I rest my case."

Oh yes, and it's also a vast left wing conspiracy to enrich Al Gore.

Some might argue that if it's possible to get rich trying to save us from ourselves, that that means there still might be hope for capitalism.

Yeah, I get it. When all the people in the top 1% of intelligence distribution collide with those in the top 1% of the US income distribution, it isn't always pretty.

just_passing_through says

If it were true they wouldn’t have been able to pass that health care bill.

Actually, the Dems only had enough votes to break the filibuster when Franken was seated in June 2009, until Kennedy croaked during the August recess, then when Kennedy's replacement was seated, until Sen Brown was seated with the new Congress in 2010. Just a couple of months in 2009 really, and the Senate can move very slowly when the opposition wants to be obstructive.

"The PPACA passed the Senate on December 24, 2009, by a filibuster-proof vote of 60–39"

No reality-twisting needed. Your "700 days of controlling both houses" understanding is the reality-challenged view.

wormwood says

hy do most small business owners, the ones who actually employee people vote Republican?

I gave you the numbers above, the split isn't as wide as you assert.

To the extent a difference exists "small business" people have the resources and connections to not need the government "helping" them. Their kids go to private schools, they Iive in gated communities, they have deductible health plans, and they can shelter $40,000/yr+ of their annual incomes in tax-favored retirement.

You are, of course, missing the bigger picture of what happens to small business people when our country becomes fucked up like Mexico or Brazil.

I guarantee you that small business would rather see a functional, full-employment economy like what we briefly enjoyed under Clinton in the late 90s, or even the fake Bush version of it in the mid-2000s, rather than the shitstorm that is coming at this country head-on.

Why do union types, university professors, actors and government hacks and those who don’t work vote mostly Democrat?

Why do you seem to be such a stupid person here? Make your points, don't be some passive-aggressive asshole.

Apple is making a deal with Chinamobile to sell them iPhones. Find out for yourself how many subscribers Chinamobile has. You do the math.

FYI, The $250K figure is for COUPLES, the figure for individuals is $200K. Oh, now someone will say $50K is not a difference. I guess to Bawney Fwank it's not.
However, I differ from some people because I think some tax breaks for people should be thrown out. The first that comes to mind of course is mortgage interest deduction.
I agree also with the idea of Cain's flat/fair tax.
Taxes should be levied on consumption, not on investment, production, and savings.
Geithner is a tool, the reason he has a job is his father doled out foundation money to Obama's looney mother for some pet project in Indonesia or other. This fact is never reported, for reasons best known to the sycophantic media weasels like Chris Matthews, et. al.
It's fascinating to see the arguments: Republicans feel that the growing debt is unsustainable, and that raising taxes will hurt the economy. Geithner's argument is: if you worry about the debt, we must raise taxes. If you don't care about the debt, that's ok, I will sell $1 trillion in bonds.
He never talks about the obvious: Live within the confines of the taxes collected by the treasury, and be satisfied with a debt equal to one year of GDP. How close they get to this will be interesting to see.
The White House screwed the GM bondholders and the non union workers lost their pensions. Obama gave EQUITY in GM to the Unions!
Return the favor and starve the Democrats. No more money, no more taxes, no more bailouts, no more cruise missiles for Libya.
48% of ALL new jobs created in the last 2 years happened in Texas. By odd coincidence, there is no income tax in Texas. They have agriculture, high tech, energy, fishing, aerospace, defense.
The lack of taxation and regulation has attracted many jobs to Texas. Higher taxes has chased many away from high tax states.

clambo says

48% of ALL new jobs created in the last 2 years happened in Texas. By odd coincidence, there is no income tax in Texas. They have agriculture, high tech, energy, fishing, aerospace, defense.

Florida and Nevada don't have income tax. How are they doing with job creation?

troll much, wormwood? Venezuela's third0-world shitholes aren't the competitive model to Republican laissez-faire capitalism, Norway and Sweden is.

wormwood says

When you ask a liberal how high,how much to satisfy, they can’t answer the question.

This is just more trolling. Check out Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Canada, Australia, and Germany's systems and get back to us. What they do seems to be working a lot better than what we do.

wormwood says

Small business people by definition are not rich. Yeah right, we are all sending our kids to private school and are immuned to bills.

What I saw Troy post was that 51% of small business owners wish republican controlled congress. Later he said this isn't much of a difference, but that to the extent that it does exist....etc.

Translation. He didn't say all small business owners are rich. But rather that some of them are, which might account at least for the small difference the 51% represents compared to the general population.

If you can't understand anything beyond self interest (which may be the case for you), then yes, we can trace party affiliation to who pays or receives the money. The rich business owner doesn't want to pay taxes to go to services or investment that aren't directly for them. Sometimes they don't even want to pay taxes for things we need for our future. And sure government workers, depend on the government for their jobs and their livelihood.

Still, I would argue that you confuse correlation with causation. Often the government worker, or professor or actor was a democrat long before they chose their career. I could ask, what is it about being a democrat that makes one more likely to choose a career of service to others, or in pursuit of creative or intellectual interests that transcend simply the pursuit of wealth ?

(note: I am not saying that all democrats or only democrats pursue such careers. Nor would I try to say that all or even most republicans have careers that are just about making money. )

wormwood says

Raising taxes on the producers will only cause the producers to pull in their horns.

Cutting off their nose to spite their face? Leaving money on the table.

Let's look at the current tax debate, raising the marginal rate of individual income over $200,000 from 35% to 39.6%.

So a person booking $300,000 in income will see an additional $4600 in taxes, $88 a week.

This is going to prevent this go-getter über-capitalist from working? GMAFB.

They will not hire. They will save their money (what little is left after the non-producers get a hold of it) because they know things will get worse.

Let them save then. The system will fall that way. The central facts we face is that we can't blindly cut government spending. We can try, but that will tear apart the system. I'd like to cut the DOD by half but I don't kid myself what would happen to this country if we did that -- even the piddly BRAC cuts killed entire communities in the late 90s.

Clinton's tax rates, contrary to unanimous Republican fear-mongering, did not destroy the economy. Your entire argument here is completely reality-challenged, i.e. bullshit.

again I am sorry about Hugo’s recent illness.

still with the passive-aggressive trolling. LOL. Like it matters. Your bullshit here is obvious enough as it is.

wormwood says

Clambo said “by odd coincidence there is no income taxes in Texas!”

well I had clambo on ignore since his stuff is 100% stupid, and I see he continues with the pattern.

Texas has a massive budget deficit:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/health-care/texas-lawmakers-fail-to-solve-big-budget-problems-punt-tough-decisions-down-the-road/2011/06/24/AGbSTWjH_story.html

and an unemployment picture not much better than the national average:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=Vx

Canada, Australia, Norway, have 1. natural resources to export 2. small populations. 3. very low immigration. Germany has no resources but low immigration and an export economy based on manufacturing, which we should emulate. Germany also as NO capital gains tax, this helps them. We should emulate what works. 1. No illegal immigration 2. No capital gains tax.
We should also drill for our own energy, since it costs about 8% of GDP, we can find it here (285 trillion cubic feet of natural gas here), and if Exxon sells it to us, we get the money back in dividends (if you bought a mutual fund).
Greece and the USA are very different. The reason Greece wanted into the Euro was to get access to more money, which they borrowed and spent. The actual economy of Greece has always been small and their GDP is a bit larger than the state of Connecticut.
The train is already here, this is now the new normal, at least in California.
If you wish to have money in the future that is worth anything at all, you must hope they fight tooth and nail to raise the debt ceiling. The only thing stopping your money from becoming worthless "lucky money" from Chinatown is the guys who seem so "unreasonable".
Sure if you're rich you don't care a rat's ass, or you are smart and bought only Swiss stocks and have a bank account in Swiss Francs.
Raising taxes is ridiculous, whether or not it is smart or fair today, they won't because this will scare financial markets.
Texas created 48% of all USA jobs in the last 2 years. There is no income tax in Texas. They have other growth industries which are promoted such as energy production.