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
by Kate Harveston Roughly 83 years ago, when Republicans in government had their first opportunity to speak on the public record about Social Security — what was then a brand-new social program and the most progressive endeavor of its time — they chose to liken it to ...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
Late last week, President Obama successfully incited new levels of fury from most of the same liberals who are generally infuriated with him in the first place by floating the truly stupid idea of linking Social Security cost-of-living-adjustments (COLAs) to something called ...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
Welcome to this week's edition of The Daily Banter Mailbag! Today, Bob, Ben and Chez discuss the fiscal cliff, the NRA and the end of the world! The questions: 1) What do you think of the theory that President Obama may be making concessions on the "fiscal cliff" deal because ...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
As most of our readers know, I'm squarely in the Obama camp for the Presidential election. This isn't because I agree with everything he has done or pledges to do in office - far from it - Obama has disappointed me on many, many issues to the point where my defense of him has ...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
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 Mark Ames: On Saturday, the tiny EU nation Slovakia held parliamentary elections, and the results surprised the “experts”: The center-left party Smer, derisively described as “populist” in the American media, won in a record landslide, the first time a single party will ...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
Bob Cesca on Republicans hell bent on ridiculing the Federal government despite taking money when it suits them: They suffer from outrageously selective amnesia by ignoring the unparalleled bloodshed of the Civil War and suggest that states could potentially secede from the ...read more
I haven't been focusing on the debt ceiling deal going on in Washington, mostly due to the epic phone hacking scandal in the UK. However, the deal is incredibly important for the future fiscal health of the US (and therefore the world), so I figured it's about time I started ...read more
Hate to say I told you so... but I (and many others) did. Wall Street turmoil left John McCain scrambling to explain why the fundamentals of the U.S. economy remained strong. It also left him defending his support for privately investing Social Security money in the same markets ...read more
"Wall Street is filled with robber barons and thieves, that's why I voted for us to put your social security in their hands!" ...read more
The American people - across party lines and ideology - do not support privatizing social security. They don't support it in boom times, let alone in the middle of this Republican recession. But John McCain, just like George W. Bush, does support privatizing social security. ...read more
A new front opens daily, as the Bush legacy is a target rich environment and John McCain's plan to make a third Bush term is a liability. Social Security is strong, but as more baby boomers retire, the long-term cash-flow needs to be addressed. We have to make sure Social ...read more
