The Herd Of Cats

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Senate Republicans can rejoice that the pervert lost. They should rename themselves The Purity Party: only the truly virtuous may apply.  If they get choosy enough, they can save on convention expenses – meet for coffee at the local Denny’s, plenty of room for The Chosen Few.

92% of Democrats voted, only 50% of Alabama Republicans. Disheartened? The Establishment, the media, everyone against them, and some people probably had legitimate concerns about the allegations.  Still, it was close.  Democrats learned the tactic will work but they need to adjust the timing. Republicans learned . . . what?

What everyone in The Purity Party forgets is that Democrats vote as a unified monolithic block, marching to the same party line with no thought of principles or morals. Senate Republicans are like herding cats, which is why even with a majority they can’t get anything accomplished. One fewer person in their saintly congregation isn’t going to make it easier to roll back Obama’s successes.

Which makes one wonder: do Rockefeller Republicans care about that?

Joe Doakes

On the one hand, I’d very much like to see the GOP get a lot better both at vetting candidates (if Moore did do what’s been alleged, I find it hard to believe it surprised everyone) and defending against this sort of thing (why did Moore not sue every single accuser for defamation, as fast as possible, if only to get their statements – perjured statements? – on record immeidately?)

On the other?  I thinks this is a continuing lesson to Republicans that are paying attention – especially if the charges against Moore wind up being frauds.  I say “continuing”, because the election of Donald Trump itself proves that an awful lot of voters are starting to ignore the noise machine.

17 thoughts on “The Herd Of Cats

  1. “Nobody comes down here and tells Alabamians what to do,” said Steve Bannon, a Virginian, speaking after an individual from Texas and several Midwesterners imploring Alabamians to vote for Roy Moore.

    That’s a very good line. 🎄

  2. That viral video of some doofus stating that “people came from all over to vote for Doug Jones”. This has apparently led the state to investigate voter fraud. With a Republican controlled state government, this one might actually prove it.

    Of course, everyone with an IQ above 50, knows that it’s happening all across the country, which explains why DemocRATs fight against voter ID.

  3. The utter lack of concern about voter fraud tells you that the Dems are hip deep in it. Why else would they be against investigating voter fraud & election integrity?
    OTH, the position of conservatives is clear: everyone who is legally entitled to vote should be allowed to vote & have that vote counted.

  4. “everyone who is legally entitled to vote should be allowed to vote & have that vote counted.”

    I agree 100%.

    But I think legal entitlement should include the requirement to show an income tax return (state for state and local, fed for fed elections) that proves you paid taxes in.

    The founders thought only property owners should have the franchise. As with so much else, they were wiser than any Latina I’ve ever run across.

  5. These are the same yahoos who believe Obama was born in Kenya and Clinton ran a child pedophile ring. They’ll believe the vote was rigged until they die.

    But they’ll do it with Jones as their senator.

  6. These are the same yahoos who believe Obama was born in Kenya and Clinton ran a child pedophile ring. They’ll believe the vote was rigged until they die.

    But they’ll do it with Jones as their senator.

  7. I doubt if Jones will get more than six years, Emery.
    Let’s be realistic here. It is not your job to pick the senator from Alabama anymore than it is my job to pick the senator from Minnesota. The yahoos of Alabama could have voted to elect Moore. That’s how our system works.

  8. As an afterthought: Merry Christmas to all. The tax plan on Trump’s desk is a nice present to those who pay taxes. 🎄🎁

  9. Income taxes are taxes on wages. If you don’t collect wages — if you live off of your wealth — income taxes aren’t your thing. Why do I hear liberal pundits talk about how the new tax plan favors the rich? If you are rich, you don’t pay taxes on your wages, becaue you aren’t paid wages, right? Because the definition of “rich” is that you don’t have to work for an employer to maintain your lifestyle.
    So when the Dems (like Sanders) say that the “rich” will pay less than their fair share under Trump’s tax reform, they mean that well paid workers will pay less than their fair share. Isn’t that right?
    Just trying to bring a little sanity & precision to the discussion.

  10. History says that the fate of an incumbent depends largely on the state of the economy at the time of the re-election bid. George H.W. Bush and Carter were good men with a bad economies, and they lost. Reagan and Clinton were both flawed individuals blessed with strong economies, and won landslide re-elections. George W. Bush and Obama were despised by half the country, but the economy was on the rebound in 2004 and 2012, and they won. Trump’s re-election will depend largely on whether the next recession hits before 2020. The temporary stimulus of this tax bill makes a continued expansion through 2020 more likely. We are more likely to suffer from the bill’s profligacy in his second term. As such it is a good political move for Trump.

    The time will come when the Democrats will have their turn to pass a tax bill. Overall, the new structure for taxation is an improvement. The iniquities in it can be fixed by raising the taxes on capital income (dividends, capital gains) to recover those revenues lost in business profit taxes, and to reduce the benefits to pass-through corporations. A value added tax that replaces flat taxes on wages (Social Security, Medicare, UI) is still on my wish list, but as structural tax reform goes, this is an improvement. If we can adjust the rates so that those reaping capital income don’t enjoy a windfall paid for by new debt, then the tax system will have improved on the whole.

  11. “The iniquities in it can be fixed by raising the taxes on capital income (dividends, capital gains) to recover those revenues lost in business profit taxes, and to reduce the benefits to pass-through corporations.”
    Taxing wealth has issues. The money produced by investment is reinvested, e.g., it is expected to return > 1.0 over time. Keynes taught us that government spending does not have a return > 1.0. So if you shift money from private use to government use, you necessarily reduce GDP from what it otherwise would be. This is an issue that is given too little attention. A touch cut has the same effect as stimulus spending by government; it increases the money spent in the private sector, where it can be expected to increase GDP.

  12. You could fix most of the worst effects of this bill by treating capital income (dividends, capital gains) no different than labor income. That shifts the tax burden from businesses to the owners of businesses. In some cases that means no change, but in many others it taxes the idle wealthy while benefiting business and job creation.

  13. Why should a dollar be taxed depending on how many other dollars are in the same pile, who has the pile, how and why the dollar was obtained or on what it was spent? It makes zero sense. The national sales tax, eliminating all other federal taxes and including the exemption only for family size, is simple, fair, and does not create millions of disruptions of the natural economy. Nor does it cost 100s of billions of $ to collect.

  14. A further incentive to either invest or distribute would be to put a 5% tax on retained earnings, to discourage cash piles. Apply the same tax to charitable trusts and university endowments that don’t spend at least 5% of their balance on charitable endeavors (not overhead) in any year. Use it or lose it.

  15. Who are you to tell anyone what they should do with their money? Or wait, you are a resident communist troll who pines for great successes of distributionist economies of say Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Carry on, sock puppet #2.

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