LiveBlog for Wednesday, September 30, 2009

#338, you too, have a good one!

330: Good point, I'll think on it.

Bye PeterW - Love you man!

I feel loved! 8) ♥

Have a great day, I'll see yas again soon!

Buh Bye, Bloggoes!!! :mrgreen:

Bye, gang!

Bye everyone! Gotta check out that R Crumb film. Thanks all!

The Repubs pretty well crapped their nest on privatizing SS, thanks to illustrious GW and Company (tm) and their massively greedy attempts to pull it off. And if there is any good thing which was a product of the big stock market hit, it might be a further unlikelihood of privatized SS..

Buh bye, Bloggonists!

Hasta manana, bananas!

Sorry I meant #323 (Limbaugh in speedo - gasp!)

Bye all!

Bye all...

#318, but you're ignoring the law of unintended consequences, and the long view. Once you dilute SS by paying for other programs explicitly on its back, at what point does it simply become another gubmint program to be cut or funding allocations reshuffled at will?

Right now, SS takes money in, it pays money out, and any surplus is stored in Treasuries, any deficit paid for by redeeming Treasuries. It is perfect in its simplicity and honesty. It is of workers, for workers. The investment class contributes nothing to it, it gets nothing from it.

Once you violate that covenant, who's to say that some future Republican administration and Congress won't just, say, divert FICA revenues to the DoD? It's just another general revenue stream at that point, after all.

#320 Now I have to get that image out of my mind. Sure it is b.s. but it is widely watched and promotes itself as somehow "American," so I am suggesting we call them on having invited a judge who wants the president to fail. It's called invading their territory.

From what I understand, our Prez will only be on the ground in Denmark for 3 hours. Heckuva European vacation for the staff!

Hey, we like our presidents stupid and lazy like us :-P

Steph and Hal - cougar attacks wolf

I personally would've liked Michelle to make the pitch, but I have no problem with Barack doing so.

317: Trust me. I do believe we need to protect SS, as the RWs have shown as much disdain for it as medicare. If it weren't for the stock market crashing, they'd probably still be pushing for privatizing a portion of it, which I totally oppose. BTW - I'm trying to address the "How do we pay for it crowd." Personally, changes in captial gains would be more palatable to me than changes to FICA, etc.

320: let's ask them to have Rush Limbaugh in a swim suit..

The Miss America Pageant is such bullshit anyway.

320 -- aww, he'll just vote for whoever reminds him most of a young Dominican boy.

Hal and Mama are hot together. Either there's going to be a birthday present soon or Steph is going to spin like crazy at the gym. Just sayin.

Hey everyone, the Miss America Pageant has invited Rush Limbaugh to be a judge. Might I suggest emails to them at info@MissAmerica.org to suggest that is a very un-American kind of person to have appear (never mind the piggy nature of the pageant).

The simple fact about Repubs is that when a buck is involved, they favor the buck.

293: Somtimes a paradigm shift is needed in order to make sea changes. I think a pragmatic approach is necessary here to affect change. Arguing for such a high increase in income tax just won't fly. Modifying the existing methods of allocating funds from FICA/OASDI and the capital gains tax are such a paradigm shift. But, I think they are changes the public would support. I have heard other respected people, such as George Soros, support such plans. I don't think it is either dishonest, or cowardly, just more pragmatic.

#278, it comes down to this:

Does one consider OASDI to be a regressive component of the tax code, or a wage insurance premium separate entirely from general revenue streams?

I clearly (and vehemently) consider it the latter.

I'm with you on taxing high-income earners. I'm with you on the amount. I'm totally against you on how to do it. Maybe it's semantics, but IMO all the talk about "fixing SS by removing the cap" and other such promist twiddling on our side has fed every bit as much into the false meme that SS won't be around for us as Republican shenanigans.

The documentary on Robert Crumb was quite good.. I think his whole family was screwed up, because of his father. His brother eventually committed suicide, as I recall.

And the part with the cartoonist losing his mind and finally drawing volumes of balloons with quotes (or was it apostrophes) was downright chilling.

Interesting texturing as well.

Thanky, Ivan!

I Keep hearing that "coffee" sound effect in that commercial on the liveblog as a bong hit.

Yii.. stop to do the sudoku and you guys sparta'd..

Congrats Duana, I yield to thee, and reveal my Inner Self (tm)

311 -- Yeah, I did see that. It was awesome.

309 - Love that Crumb. Did you see the documentary on him?

I loved the Eddie Izzard riff on the Great Flood -- "What about ducks?"

Happy Sparta-birthday Madduane! A good omen for you.

I'm lusting after the R. Crumb illustrated Book of Genesis that just came out...

#303 No no, it was Madduane's Sparta. At least on my screen, Madduane has post 300.

Congrats on your Spartatude, madduane!

#291 Leonard, good points, although she did say the continued publicity was interfering with her ability to live her present life. On the other hand, the justice system has an interest in maintaining its integrity by forcing people to deal with stuff promptly.

Thanks, Hal, for bringing up the tax-exempt status of these "churches" that are claiming Sec. 501 (c) (3) status -- they're effectively subsidized by us by not having to pay taxes on their income while engaging in all these political activities :evil:

Sparta?

Thanks for the birfdy wishes, Amy!

Ooo so close. Happy Sparta Amy!

Hahahahaaaa!!! Juicy wet sparta wins!

Birthday Sparta. nice.

SCHPHAAHHHTHAA!!! :P

#295 happy birthday, Madduane.

Sparta!

Six free minutes of what, exactly?

i feel skyhawk hovering

Have a good 'un, Paul! Thanks again for the birthday wishes :)

Thanks Juliet. What did we do before Wiki? :)

#278, the Medicare portion is not capped. So nothing to argue about there.

Again, you're advocating hijacking SS contributions to non-SS programs. The cap does create equality in the system - wages above the cap do not receive benefits above the cap either. Your benefits are tied to your contributions - up to the cap. Similarly, while investment income is not taxes at all, it also does not count toward benefits.

The claim that the cap creates inequality or is regressive is a falsehood. Pure and simple. The premise of OASDI is that what you get out is tied to what you put in - that is a covenant between the worker and the plan. It is not a general tax on general incomes, it is a wage insurance plan paid for by premium contributions on wages.

From a standpoint of revenue generation for our favorite programs, raising income tax rates on incomes above $110k by 12.4 points generates approximately the same revenue on approximately the same people, but does not break the basic premise that FICA-OASDI contributions are solely for Social Security disbursements.

Frankly, I am as disgusted when liberals try to manipulate Social Security as conservatives. I have no objection to raising taxes on these same earners by that amount. But do it the honest way - by raising income taxes. Do not divert FICA contributions to non-FICA programs.

Have the political courage to argue for higher income tax rates on top earners - do not try to sneak in a tax on the back of Social Security contributions.

Oh, and the premise that the public option needs funding is false. The public option is self-funding through its own premiums. The only thing that needs funding is the low-income subsidies.

OK, I get it. You don't want me to sparta.

Have fun, you guys fight over it.

have a great day all, see ya tomorry.

Unless Polanski's victim reconciled with him, reached a settlement and forgave him, she would have been unable to recover from the trauma of childhood rape to live a normal life. Her statements should be viewed in that light.

Her choices for her own emotional health should have absolutely no bearing on Polanski's legal consequences.

As awful as what Polanski suffered, losing family in the Holocaust and his wife and unborn child to the Manson Family, that does not shield him from the consequences of raping a child.

Avoiding extradition while spending 30 years as a celebrated filmmaker and living the good life in Europe was not "punishment".