Rush Limbaugh is back and he's still a big fat idiot.
He actually says Obama won a "massive victory" in the fiscal cliff deal, for raising taxes on the top 0.3%. You know, on people just like Rush. Rush's salary? $38 million/year.
If ever anyone needed any proof that Rush couldn't care less about the principled nature of the lower Bush tax rates for all Americans, this is it, because those rates just became permanent for everyone, except for Rush and about 600,000 other rich Americans who make $400,000 a year or more. Their taxes go up about 13%, but only on paper. You would think a so-called conservative would at least acknowledge that victory and give George Bush some credit, but no, not even after a caller reminds him about that at the end of the first hour. The entire opening monologue was completely self-referential, and suggests that Rush is talking his book here. He doesn't even understand the math in the deal, which now lets the income rich keep $1.8 trillion over ten years from the permanent AMT fix. Their cost under the deal? $600 billion over ten years, as I said, on paper. Even the income rich can still shift income out of the "ordinary" category to the now 33% higher, but still low dividend and capital gains rate category to escape the 39.6% top income tax rate. They will, and the somewhat rosier federal revenue scenario used to sell this deal won't even materialize. The rich will stay that way. They will not pay much more. And the Democrats will be stuck with another failed scheme.
Obama didn't win a victory here, the American people and George Bush did, and I still haven't heard a single so-called conservative radio talker even acknowledge it, let alone be grateful for it. That doesn't buy ears. Only what bleeds does, or what might bleed, which is why all Rush can talk about is some hypothetical threat in the future, when an actual threat, increased tax rates on everyone, has been completely neutralized in the present by good Republican leadership.
I say, "thank you". All Rush can say? "@#$% you".
