Tag: More please

You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn’t black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing.
You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, fuck it, I don’t care what you think. I’m trying to do the right thing.
I’m tired of Republican-Democrat politics. They can take the job and shove it. I come from a blue-collar background. I’m trying to do the right thing, and that’s where I’m going with this.

Roy McDonald, Republican state senator in New York, on reversing his previous party-line opposition to gay marriage. More please.
Source: New York Daily News

Never. Is never good enough for you?

Nancy Pelosi on when the Democratic plan to destroy Social Security would be introduced. This is the sort of Democrat we need a whole lot more of.
And, as Atrios notes, the Bush administration hadn’t yet even offered their plan and wouldn’t, really, until after the whole thing was effectively dead. They were, in fact, counting on that Defeatocratic impulse to get out there and co-own a truly terrible idea just because the Serious People wanted them to. For once, they didn’t do it. That’s true leadership.

Now, [the GOP] will say, ‘Well, we’re going to cut spending.’ So you say, ‘Okay, what are you going to cut?’ And then what they say is, ‘Well, we’ll cut education by 20 percent. We’ll eliminate 200,000 children from early childhood education programs like Head Start. We’ll cut financial aid for 8 million college students.
At a time when the education of our country’s citizens is probably the best predictor of that country’s economic success, they think it’s more important to give another tax break to folks who are on the Forbes 400 list.
Now, I want to ask my Republican friends: Do you think China is cutting back on education? Do you think South Korea is making it harder for its citizens to get a college education? These countries aren’t playing for second place. And guess what. The United States doesn’t play for second place. We play for first place.

Barack Obama, finally playing for first place himself.

So the next question is simply, “What do the experts on your staff tell you that the top marginal tax rate should be in order to maximize tax revenues, leaving everything else about the tax code the same?” Journalists should relentlessly ask it of the Republican leadership in Congress who continue to make fallacious claims, and the Democratic leadership in Congress ought to ask it politely in a letter to CBO Director Doug Elmendorf.

Andrew Samwick, nailing the Laffer Curve. Add to the list of things an agile Democratic party could positively eviscerate the GOP with by attacking their perceived strengths and, you know, turning them into colossal weaknesses. See: Marriage, getting the government completely out of.

The GOP’s class warfare has backfired.

southpol:

“I have voted Republican my entire life,” he says. “I don’t want to vote for Harry Reid. But I don’t want to be told I’m lazy, and I’m dumb, and I’m living high on the hog, collecting [unemployment insurance] because I want to.”

(via ryking)

Wow. Color me shocked. The article is at least as worth-your-read for containing this opening paragraph:

Sometime this spring, Republicans turned against unemployment. In Nevada, Sharron Angle ®, the candidate facing incumbent Sen. Harry Reid (D), told local reporters, “You can make more money on unemployment than you can going down and getting one of those jobs that is an honest job.” (Untrue.) Angle also called the unemployed “spoiled.”

Emphasis added to point out that it’s just not that hard to take a point of view. Especially a sensible and informative one: what Angle said was demonstrably false. Period. No “opinions differ” or, even worse, simply print what she said and “leave it there.”

More please.

The GOP’s class warfare has backfired.

The Republicans are thinking, why don’t they just sell some of their stock? If they’re in really dire straits maybe they can take some of their art collection and send it to the auctioneer. And if they’re in deep deep trouble maybe the unemployed can sell one of their yachts. That’s what the Republicans are thinking right now. But that’s not the life of ordinary people…I will say to the Republicans who have blocked this bill for months, to those who have kept food out of the mouths of children, I will say to them now, may God have mercy on your souls

Alan Grayson on the unemployment insurance extension

Rand Paul has this tendency to get in public or get on national cable shows and feel like he wants to give me a lecture on constitutional law. I’m the attorney general of Kentucky. He didn’t go to law school. I did. I don’t need a lecture on Constitutional law from Rand Paul or Sarah Palin.

Jack Conway (via apsies)