Tuesday night, America sent a very clear message to Donald Trump and the Republican Party: Fuck you. Oh, Trump has been furiously tweeting that he won and Fox will be telling their viewers that everything is just wonderful. In fact, Sean Hannity kicked it off by announcing early ...read more
I woke up this morning with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, because I knew that as soon as I turned on my phone, I'd get a notification of the Republican's "accomplishment." Late last night, the Republican Party displayed their true colors by passing their tax bill ...read more
Once upon a time, there was a political party that existed only to tear things down. They used to know how to build but they decided it was easier to destroy and they were experts at it. But one day, they took over the entire government without meaning to and quickly realized ...read more
Sometimes we get so caught up in the nuts and bolts of the real-world impact of laws that we forget that they can have a powerful psychological and sociological impact as well. Republicans and conservative thought leaders understand this far better than liberals do and it ...read more
Today in irony, we bring you this nugget from millionaire Republican, former Goldman Sachs executive, and $700 billion bank bailer-outer Neel Kashkari, who's challenging California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) in November. In Thursday's Wall Street Journal, Kashkari described in an ...read more
The House of Representatives voted this morning on Congressman Paul Ryan's budget proposal. It passed by a vote of 221 to 207. The 221 yeahs were all Republican, 197 Democrats and 10 Republicans voted no. You can read the official vote count here. You can read the official ...read more
For most of the country, March means one thing: college basketball. This year, in Washington, DC it means something completely different. The madness to which I refer is what’s happening with our federal budget. If you are not troubled by the fact that we are facing this ...read more
The Daily Banter Headline Grab (from the The Hill): Although the White House has endorsed that idea before, White House press secretary Jay Carney unequivocally took it off the table during his daily briefing Monday. It's not altogether surprising — Democrats firmly backed ...read more
Here's precisely why raising the Medicare eligibility age appears to be the only solution to keeping the program solvent: the Republican Party, which hates Medicare and always has, and the compliant DC news media, which self-consciously dittos the Republicans so as to not appear ...read more
In response to President Obama's offer last week to hike taxes by $1.6 trillion and to exempt Medicare and Social Security from cuts to beneficiaries, the Republicans have finally presented a counter offer. From Buzz Feed: House Republicans put their criticisms of President ...read more
The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From Huff Post: House Speaker John Boehner says President Obama should drop his proposal to avoid automatic tax increases and spending cuts at the end of the year, and instead embrace a plan outlined by Erskine Bowles -- co-chair of the White ...read more
The looming fight over the 'fiscal cliff' promises to be another gigantic sellout of the middle classes and poor. President Obama has talked about a 'Grand Bargain' he intends to make with the Republicans in order to stop a set of $1.2 trillion spending cuts and tax hikes that ...read more
Paul Krugman on the deficit reduction plan that is widely regarded by serious economists as, well, frankly ridiculous: So, a public service reminder: Simpson-Bowles is terrible. It mucks around with taxes, but is obsessed with lowering marginal rates despite a complete absence ...read more
After a week of Romney trying to undo the damage of the "47%" video, these are the latest numbers on his likeliness to win the election if it were held today (from Nate Silver): What conclusion can we draw? Andrew Sullivan deduces the obvious: We have found that Romney in ...read more
By Bob Cesca: In a speech filled with misleading statements and nostalgic lines about how wonderful life used to be before President Obama was inaugurated, the single-most ridiculous line from Mitt Romney's acceptance speech Thursday night was this: "...Every president since ...read more
The Daily Banter Headline Grab (via The AP): GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's new promise to restore the Medicare cuts made by President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law could backfire if he's elected. The reason: Obama's cuts also extended the life of ...read more
By Bob Cesca: It wouldn't be a presidential election year if the Republican nominee didn't threaten to cut funding to several "liberal" institutions that rely upon federal money: Amtrak, PBS, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. ...read more
The Daily Banter Headline Grab (via The Huffington Post): "The president, I am told, is talking about Medicare today," Ryan said during an appearance at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. "We want this debate. We need this debate, and we will win this debate. "What I don’t ...read more
By Chez Pazienza: In case you haven't seen this yet, it's pretty much guaranteed to make your day. Or give you a brain hemorrhage. Or possibly both. Yesterday morning on CNN's Starting Point, Soledad O'Brien got into a contentious on-air back-and-forth with Mitt Romney ...read more
By Bob Cesca: Here's the biggest flimflam the Republican Party will try to get away with this year. Wait. Let's qualify that statement. There are quite a few scams in the works right now from the Romney/Ryan/Republican cabal. Some of the more egregious ones include the one in ...read more
By Robert Parry: The newly minted Republican ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan is placing a big – and some might say cynical – bet that the stereotype of the “greedy geezer” is real, that Americans now eligible for Medicare or close to it don’t care that the popular health ...read more
James Kwak provides an enlightening analysis of the GOP argument that the individual mandate is an oppressive tax on the middle class. His conclusion: In short: Very few people are even theoretically subject to the tax, and most of them are made much better off by the law, since ...read more
By Bob Cesca: Throughout the last four years, whenever healthcare reform has reached critical mass -- either when it was in danger of failing or close to passing, big dumb Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson (D-In Name Only) has invariably shoved his bulbous skull into the mix and ...read more
By Bob Cesca: There's a myth about old people. They're evidently wiser than the rest of us. Through longevity, experiences and a lifetime of observation of the human condition, they have insights about the world that the rest of us aren't yet aware of. And they vote. Senior ...read more
By Ben Cohen: Yesterday, I went on Abby Martin's new show on the RT network to talk about the failure of austerity economics in Europe, and why the US must not follow the same route. Check it out below: I discuss Paul Ryan's plan for the economy in the segment, and I urge ...read more
By Bob Cesca: The press and the Republican Party are almost equally driven to totally destroy Social Security as we know it. The 2012 Social Security Trustees Report was released this week and here are several headlines from three of the top newspapers in the country: The Wall ...read more
By Bob Cesca: It's very unlikely the president will offer up a new healthcare reform bill if the current law is ripped to shreds by the conservative-controlled Supreme Court. In his own words, there are only two ways to make sure all Americans can afford healthcare: the current ...read more
The White House today released a new report highlighting the benefits of the Affordable Care Act. The report discusses how the Affordable Care Act has improved the health care system for millions of Americans and includes stories of Americans who have been helped by the law. ...read more
TPM provides the highlights of Obama's new deficit reduction plan: A debt failsafe that will be triggered if the debt-to-GDP ratio hasn’t stabilized, and begun to decline by mid-decade. This will include automatic spending cuts, and reductions in tax subsidies, but no tax ...read more
Paul Krugman has spent a good deal of time blasting apart Paul Ryan's intellectually bankrupt health care plan so one can understand why the esteemed economist is a little irked Politico has decided to award Ryan healthcare policymaker of the year. According to Krugman, ...read more
The substance of Obama's speech on jobs really stood out last night - the President laid out a pretty comprehensive plan to stimulate the American economy with $447 billion worth of investments and tax cuts. Obama detailed the areas in which the government would invest, where ...read more
Image via Wikipedia Paul Krugman slams Joe Lieberman's proposals for Medicare eligibility: Joe Lieberman is proposing that we raise the Medicare eligibility age. That’s a truly cruel idea; as it happens, I know several people who are hanging on, postponing needed medical ...read more
Andrew Sullivan points out the glaring flaw in the 'private markets are most efficient' argument coming from the Right: Private healthcare costs way, way more than public healthcare. The goals of financial sanity and promoting the free market and, in this case, contradictory. ...read more
Dear Democrats: You have been given a gift. Months after they hammered Democrats for cutting Medicare, House Republicans are debating whether to relaunch their quest to privatize the health program for seniors. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is testing ...read more
Of course, when you put it that way, it's no wonder conservatives would support it: • The Roadmap would raise taxes on Americans making between $20,000 and $200,000 while slashing taxes in half for the wealthiest Americans. Some three-fourths of Americans would face tax ...read more
