Women Bore The Brunt Of Unemployment, But Voted For Obama Anyway

men's unemployment level falls below old ceiling

women's unemployment level remains above old ceiling

You can argue all you want about equality between the sexes, but it's more obvious than ever before that women have a double standard when it comes to equality.

Women by a significant majority still think someone else has an obligation to take care of them when things head south, whether it's daddy, hubby or The State. In 2012, despite bearing the brunt of four years of the worst unemployment since World War II, they didn't blame those four years of zero progress on Obama. Instead they voted for more of it, believing in the commitment of government to help them even though it isn't.

While the number of unemployed men has fallen below the previous peak reached during the recession of the early 1980s, the number of unemployed women has not and remains at record levels.

HuffPo reported on the phenomenon here two weeks after the election: 

This year Obama campaigned on giving a leg up to those needing education, health care or job training. Romney talked about shrinking government, except for the military, and said overgrown social programs were creating a culture of dependency. Their arguments fit the long-running fissure of the gender gap.

"Women stuck with Obama," said Karen Kaufmann, a University of Maryland associate professor who studies the gender gap. "We didn't see a lot of movement from women. The movement was really men going back to the Republican Party."

Women's support for Obama dropped just 1 percentage point from 2008; they voted for him by 55 percent to 44 percent this time. Men's support for Obama dropped 4 points, flipping them to Romney's side, by a 52-45 margin. Women were 10 percentage points more likely to vote for Obama than men were, according to the survey of voters at the polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks.

This is the political price the country has had to pay for eschewing marriage and for non-commitment in relationships generally. And whatever else may be said, the dependent sex is proving that it is still the weaker sex, and if men aren't paying the weaker sex directly with emotional commitment and financial support, the whole country is paying it in the form of higher taxes and larger deficits, and getting family breakdown and legions of socially dysfunctional offspring in the process.

The sexual revolution has been bad for America in every way, Obama aims to prolong it, and women by a significant majority, being weaker, see no alternative and won't until men provide one.

By Every Measure, The War On Women Has Been Waged By Obama

white women over 20

all women over 25

women who maintain families

black women over 20

hispanic women over 20

Unemployment levels for all women, regardless of race, have reached and stayed at all time highs under Obama. They should have asked for a divorce from the president, but instead they are standing by their man.

old women

Unemployment Levels For All Races Reach, Stay At, All Time Highs Under Obama

Hispanic Unemployment Reaches, Stays At, All Time Highs Under Obama

Black Unemployment Level Stays At All Time Highs Under Obama

The prior ceiling of 2.4 million in the black unemployment level, reached briefly when Ronald Reagan was president, has become the new floor under Barack Obama.

Black unemployment has stayed at these all time highs under Obama since early 2009.

Has the first black president been good for black employment? The answer is No.

$11,480 Was Your Fair Share Of The Taxes For 2011. How Come You Didn't Pay It?

For fiscal 2011, federal spending came to $3.6 trillion, and US population came to 313.85 million people.

If we taxed everyone equally as the US Constitution called for originally (you know, "direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers", which is one reason why we must have a census every ten years to begin with), all that federal spending in 2011 divided by all those millions of people comes to . . . wait for it . . . $11,480 owed per person.

The actual paid in tax revenues, for everything? $2.3 trillion, divided by 313.85 million people is . . .

. . . just $7,328 per person.

So pay up you deadbeats.

Quit Complaining: Here's How Social Security Taxes Have Increased Over The Years

View the table here.

You got a break for two years, now your rate goes back to what it was starting in 1990.

Quit complaining.

Self-Absorbed College Grad Blames Payroll Tax Increase On Selfish Congress

FoxNews has the story here:

“As a newly-graduated person, someone coming straight out of college, I don’t like the idea of having less money coming to me due to the selfish interests of people in Congress who don’t have any interest in reducing our financial problems,” Hoffman told FoxNews.com. “This is an impediment for future economic growth. It’s going to make it harder for young people like myself to get married, find a better job, you name it.”

I guess no one ever told her Democrats invented Social Security under FDR in the 1930s, and that every American has had to pay increasing rates of tax for it ever since. How do you graduate from college not knowing that?

Equality. It's such a bummer.

Obama's Obsessive Hatred Of The Rich Will Lead To This

"Accounts of village reform show how a whole community could be roused through mass meetings to attack its wealthier members, to kill the most hated, and then to redistribute all the confiscated property."

Jose Manuel Barroso Call Your Office, Existential Threat For You On Line 2

From Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, here:

A day after European Commission chief Manuel Barroso said the "existential threat to the euro has essentially been overcome", we have the monthly jobless data from Eurostat. Unemployment has reached a record 26.6pc in Spain, rising to 56.5pc for youth. It is almost the same in Greece: 26.0, (57.6) ... but Greece's data is old. It will soon be worse. Followed by: Portugal: 16.3, (38.7) / Ireland: 14.6, (29.7) … but improving, since Ireland is highly competitive in EMU / Slovakia: 14.5, (35.8) / Italy: 11.1, (37.1) … though be cautious of the Italian data because it famously undercounts discouraged workers. Italy's rate is probably nearer 14pc, comparing like with like. It is a record 11.8pc for EMU as a whole. ... Mr Barroso was once a Maoist and a student activist in Portugal's Carnation Revolution against the reactionaries. Good for him. Which side would he be on now if he were 40 years younger?

(image source)

Wow. 11 Years Ago Gasoline Was Just Over A Buck!

Workers Depending On 2 Part Time Jobs Hits All Time High

figures annualized to show the trend

The latest monthly reading in December 2012 shows that a record 2.118 million Americans have part time jobs both for their primary work and their secondary work, 23% above the upper range limit of 1.72 million breached in 2006.

In both August 2000 and August 2002 the low point in the monthly measurement was reached: 1.398 million. The all time high now is 51.5% higher than that low point from over ten years ago.

Demented Jim Isn't Going To Lead The People, He's Going To Follow Them

Jim DeMint of the Heritage Foundation announces the first phase of the new strategy, here, in The Washington Post:

We need to test the market and our message to communicate more effectively.

That’s why Heritage will start this year to help the conservative movement understand how Americans from all walks of life perceive public policy issues and how to communicate conservative ideas and solutions.

This research project into current public perceptions and how we change them will assist in the resurgence of the conservative movement in America.

That's right Jim, tell them what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. It's easier to win that way.

Secretary of the Treasury Designate Jack Lew is a Prick

That's the basic conclusion of the story here.

Oh well, what's one more prick in an administration full of them, and headed by one?

CNBC Calls Terrible 9-Week Unemployment Trend "Stability"

"Weekly applications for U.S. unemployment benefits ticked up slightly last week, the latest sign of stability in the job market."

These are stable, too:

CNBC. Propagandists for the regime.

Harold Meyerson Thinks The Rich Got One Sweet Deal From The Democrats

Because the capital gains tax rate was raised only 33% from 15% to 20% instead of rising 164% to equalize it with the fiscal cliff deal's highest ordinary income tax rate of 39.6% on the richest Americans. Yikes! Can you imagine?

For The Washington Post, here:

"The tax deal Congress passed last week raised the top rate on wages and salaries from 35 percent to 39.6 percent. The rate on income from capital gains and dividends, however, was raised to only 20 percent from 15 percent. There has been no rending of garments nor gnashing of teeth from our super-rich compatriots; they got one sweet deal."

But it's a point conservatives should ponder more because Meyerson writes of common ground we share.

For one thing, there is love of country in Meyerson's article, a desire to see Americans benefit from investment domestically where it throws off all sorts of additional beneficial economic effects, instead of seeing those accrue to communities in foreign lands. American business long ago became unpatriotic in service to the almighty bottom line, which is why your job went to Mexico and then to China. This ushered in a process which has made the American worker more equal to the poverty of the foreign worker, instead of the other way around. But higher taxes on investment capital aren't going to reverse that. Only disincentivizing foreign investment and rewarding domestic investment will, which is a point which illuminates a conservative principle.

When it comes to economic inequality, conservatives should consider Meyerson's observation that the biggest gains overall in recent decades have come in investment income to wealthy investors, not in ordinary income to the rest of us. He doesn't say so, but it illustrates a conservative principle: When you want less of something, tax it. That is precisely what has produced the situation he decries. We have taxed ordinary income exorbitantly compared to investment income and consequently we have less of the ordinary income variety and more of the investment income variety. And we also actually reward foreign investment in the tax code, allowing unpatriated profits to escape taxation. To get more gains in ordinary income, we should equalize tax rates between ordinary and investment income . . . just not at progressive income tax rates. Conservatives should press for a world in which all money is treated the same in the tax code by taxing income of all kinds at one low uniform rate. Income inequality has to begin somewhere, and it begins in the tax code, not in the profits of Warren Buffett.

Similarly with supporting an aging population, it would be nice if there were a little liberal outrage, and a little conservative outrage for that matter, for the way the federal government conspires to suppress interest rates with a weak dollar policy. This punishes savers, but especially the old who expected and need return on capital to take care of themselves instead of depending on government. A strong stable dollar which has the same value when you are 80 as it had when you were 8 is what we need, but sadly our entire class of elites is committed to monetarism, which at its root means the dollar of 2013 could hardly be less equal to the dollar of 1913 than it is.

There is a theme here involving inequality, expressed in lower-wage foreign workers, ordinary income punished with higher relative taxes, and devalued savers' dollars, which could unite liberals and conservatives, and also the country, if only it had an effective advocate in a statesman who had the audacity to point out that big business and big government seem to be joined in common cause against the best interests of the American people. None dare call it fascism.

101 Years Of The US Government 10yr Bond Yield

US Government 10yr Bond Yield Pops 10% On Fiscal Cliff Deal

But quickly cools, meaning the bond market's opinion was Meh.

By way of contrast, yields plunged roughly 33% between July and September 2011 from the 3s to the 2s in the wake of the debt-ceiling mini-compromise.

The five year yield nadir was about 1.38 in late July 2012. Yields today are almost 35% higher than that, but are still 50% off what they were in early January 2008 near 4.

Interactive chart here.

Velocity Of Spending Money Falls To Early 1990s Levels As Americans Hoard It

Meaning money isn't changing hands for new goods and services like it had been after 1996. M1 has skyrocketed from $1.4 trillion in 2008 to in excess of $2.4 trillion today (here). That's about $21 billion a month over four years being withheld from spending by consumers.

Another bubble bursts.

Rock Valley College In Illinois Cuts Part-Timers To 25 Hours To Avoid ObamaCare

As reported here:

"Rock Valley College took action last week to pare down the hours of their Continuous Part Time employees to 25 hours. Beginning in 2014, public and private employers, who have part-time employees, will be required to offer insurance benefits to those employees who work an average of 30 hours per week or face a financial penalty.

"New part-time employees at RVC are being hired with a 25 hour maximum. At this time the college cannot afford the insurance expense or the penalty for not providing the health insurance."

Nebraska Wendy's Cuts Hours For 100 To Avoid ObamaCare

As reported here:

"A fast-food chain is slashing employee hours so franchise owners don't have to pay health benefits. Around 100 local Wendy’s workers have learned their hours are being cut. A spokesperson says a new health care law is to blame.

"The company has announced that all non-management positions will have their hours reduced to 28 a week."

Liberal hysteria at thinkprogress.org here inflates the reported number to 300:

"Not long after the owner of the Olive Garden and Red Lobster chains admitted their anti-Obamacare campaigns hurt more than helped, the owner of a Wendy’s franchise in Omaha, Nebraska plans to cut 300 employees’ hours to part-time to avoid providing them health care coverage."

How else do you miss that detail in both the first and last paragraphs of the story unless you didn't bother to read it?

Job Leavers Today Represent Just 8% Of The Unemployed

Job leavers today represent just 8% of the unemployed. Historically when this metric reaches 15% it appears predictive of a recession. Just two recessions occurred when the metric was below that, near 12.5%. Coincidently those were the two worst recessions in the post-war period from an unemployment perspective, with total unemployment peaking near 10% in 1982-83 and 2009. They were also the only two recessions where the percentage of unemployment from job leavers plunged below 7.5%.

Rush Limbaugh Adopts The Class Warfare Of Obama/The Wall Street Journal

Today, here:

The middle class still is, in an aggregate sense, where all the money in the country is. That's where all the money is in the economy. The rich do not hold all the money.

This is the voice of a very rich man who is under attack by a leftist president and a leftist consensus which says that the rich do not pay their fair share, the voice of a man who is not reasoning as a conservative but emoting as a rich man. If he reasoned as a conservative, if The Wall Street Journal reasoned as conservatives, we would be seeing something other than the suggestion that the leftists go victimize the middle class. Like the bank robber, this thinking, if it can be called thinking at all, maintains that you should tax the middle class because that's where the money is.

As such what Rush says is not conservative, but purely reactionary in the worst sense of the term: it responds to an historical development in which it finds itself the victim and seeks escape instead of statesmanship. This is what you get from a Rush Limbaugh, who abhors learning. You wouldn't get that from a William F. Buckley, Jr.

It goes without saying that it is absurd to suggest that all the money is in the middle, but apparently we must insist that it is not so.

The middle quintile of households made a median income of almost $50,000 in 2011. Generously speaking, this approximates to every single income in the country in 2011 making between $35,000 and $65,000 annually, 35 million workers, accounting for $1.7 trillion out of $6.2 trillion in net compensation, just 27% of the total pie. The bottom end of the richest quintile, on the other hand, begins somewhere just north of $100,000 annually, 10 million workers, accounting for $2.1 trillion out of $6.2 trillion in net compensation in 2011, significantly more at almost 34% of the total pie.

But this is no way for a conservative to look at it.

The founders of the country envisioned equality of contribution from taxation, which the original constitution required to be direct, apportioned according to population. This is why taxation was always very low, because the poor could not afford it. This is also why we have a census in the constitution, not so that we may learn how many Americans are of Italian descent, but simply how many there are, for tax purposes. If it is pleaded that the constitution has been changed to permit indirect taxation, it is still more originally American to insist on equality of treatment under the tax code. The real problem with America is that originalist principles were thrown under the bus in the early 20th century by progressives like Teddy Roosevelt, and enshrined in constitutional amendments under people like Woodrow Wilson.

Equality of treatment under the law is the principle conservatives should be trumpeting. But you will listen for that in vain from Rush Limbaugh.

The progressives like Wilson, a Presbyterian whose grandiose ideas bordered on the fanatical and are reminiscent of no one so much as George W. Bush, misused Christianity by insisting that "to whom much is given, much is required" in arguing for progressive taxation, and forgot that "no one can be my disciple who does not say goodbye to everything that he has". The actual price of Christian discipleship was everything you had, whether you were rich or poor. But in the secularized, immanentized bastard version of this under progressivism, the price became distorted so that the richer you were the more you owed, the poorer the less. It is little wonder that for that the rich demanded more, and eventually got it, in special rules in the tax code designed especially for them, which since that time have evolved into the elaborate distortions and complexities of the tax code we face with trepidation and consternation today.

In a very real sense when it comes to the tax code, The American Century has been the most un-American one of all, and the crying need of the time is to reverse it and refound the country anew on the original American principle of equality of treatment.

Rush Limbaugh: Turd In The Conservative Punchbowl

On Rush Limbaugh's role in the decline of American conservatism, as recounted by Andrew Ferguson for The Weekly Standard, here:

The idea that conservatives should have a special interest in high culture​—​the best that has been thought and said, sung and played, carved and drawn​—​has been selectively applied. In speeches and in the [Mars Hill Audio] Journal [Ken] Myers has often raised the question of why political conservatives, who defended the literary canon, the Great Books, with such energy in the eighties and nineties, went limp when it came to defending other traditional forms of cultural expression.

A watershed may have been reached when Rush Limbaugh, who would replace William Buckley as conservatism’s chief publicist in the early ’90s, chose as his show’s theme music a Top 40 track by the Pretenders​—​a self-conscious contrast, Limbaugh has said, to the baroque trumpet concerto that opened Buckley’s TV show Firing Line. Buckley’s fanfare had signaled that he aspired to something lively but elevated, slightly at an angle to the surrounding popular culture. The Pretenders’ guitar riff was meant to signal that Limbaugh’s conservatism would have none of that stuffy stuff: He was fully at home with what had become of American culture and wasn’t terribly curious about what had come before.

Which is why Rush Limbaugh isn't much interested, either, for example, in the original principle of direct taxation in the constitution. American history doesn't exist for Rush before 1913, which is why Donald Trump, who believes in tariffs on China, doesn't qualify as a conservative. Rush only learned the bad stuff from Buckley . . . like how to excommunicate people from the movement. "Stripped-down" isn't just for punkers.

Is FINRA Bent On Driving Out The Little Broker?

Inquiring minds will wonder, after reading this:

Since 2007, there are 12.5 percent fewer brokerage firms, 5 percent fewer branch offices and 6 percent fewer registered representatives in the financial services industry.

According to Treece’s data, there has been a 26 percent increase in the number of disciplinary actions taken against member firms, a 31 percent increase in the number of firms expelled from the industry and a 65 percent increase in the number of individuals expelled. After three hours, the Finra brass apologized to Treece.

China Commits $350 Million To Develop Thorium Power

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has the story here, and tells you better than I can why you should care. What's old may become new again.

Global Warming To Blame For Hurricane Sandy, Now Record Low Temps In China

Amazing, but true. Coastal waters freeze, trapping ships!

Story here.

Obama Finally Cracks The 51% Barrier

It only took two months of diligent counting, but Obama has finally garnered 51.03% of the popular vote in Election 2012, entitling him to a tax increase on the 0.31% of Americans at the top of the income ladder, or so he says.

Mitt Romney got 47%, but not the now proverbial 47%, who are about to find out that tax increases on the rich amounting to $60 billion a year divided by 148 million Americans comes to a handout of just 405 bucks each. Don't spend it all in one place.

And the libertarians, fittingly, got the 0.99%, the actual support of Occupy Wall Street which, like all crackpots, claimed to represent nearly everybody in the 99% while crapping on your front stoop, which free expression libertarians are all for.

Data here.

The Most Important Thing You Need To Know About The Middle Class

Rich people need it for cover.

Here We Go Again: The Wall Street Journal's Lies About The Middle Class

No matter how much and how long they repeat it, it still isn't true: $250K isn't "upper middle class".

Like their opponents on the left, maybe because as libertarians they are genetically related to the left, The Wall Street Journal likes to assert false premises buried in subordinate clauses of paragraphs addressing a different topic, hoping to gain your assent through rhetorical slight of hand. It's an effective technique used by leftists everywhere to ideologize people, which is to create beliefs which are not supported by facts.

Here they are this morning, squealing like all the other rich libertarian pigs at RealClearMarkets about the raw deal they just got in the fiscal cliff compromise:

"Under the new law, some of the steepest tax increases may fall on upper-middle class earners with incomes just above $250,000."

As much as I get tired of challenging this assumption, the stupendous lie that it is awakens in me just enough disgust to get the old corpuscles going in the morning.

If you make $250,000/year, you are in the top 0.67742% of wage earners in this country, ok? You wouldn't know middle class if it hit you in the ass with a sack of potatoes. You can complain all you want about how hard it is to live in New York City on that income, but it still doesn't make you middle class. I'm not sure what it makes you, but out of 314 million Americans, there are only 1.025 million like you at the top of the income ladder. Like in the dictionary, you can look it up.

I'm not surprised to read lies in The Wall Street Journal. They actually advocate lying, here, or excuse it with the is is ought argument, here. In 2012 lying seemed to be a peculiar fascination of the editors.

That's the difference between the old America and the new one. The old America still believes lying is wrong, whether to ourselves or to others. The new one wants to be free to lie. In fact, it believes that unless you are free to lie you aren't free.

To hell with that.

"PMS Is The Major Cause Of Water Retention In Women"

So says How Stuff Works, here, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, here:

"Chris Christie does not have a weight problem. He has a water retention problem.”

Does anyone know if the Weeper of the House included funds for that in the Hurricane Sandy relief bill?

GDP Under Bush Was More Than Twice As Good As It Is Under Obama

Americans Have Been Hoarding Spending Money Since October 27th, 2008

That's the last time M1 was at the $1.4 trillion level.

Americans haven't looked back since.

Since that date in 2008, hoarding of spending money has increased at a rate north of 66% overall. Compare that to the previous four year period from October 2004 to October 2008 when money in consumers' spending accounts increased only 8.4%.

Theoretically, in excess of $1 trillion has been removed from consumer spending over the four year period since 2008, but it has been kept in such a way that it is ready to spend, suggesting Americans have been waiting to spend the money, preparing to spend the money, or just plain saving the money in the only accounts they own where they can keep it.

I'll go with the latter.

This is an enormous sum when compared with the actual dollar increase in GDP for the three years from 2009 through Q3 2012 annualized, which is a measly $1.84 trillion. Assuming non-crisis conditions, however, these monies might have been spent instead of saved and GDP would have increased to at least $2.84 trillion instead of $1.84 trillion, or as much as 35% higher than the reality.

Parenthetically, notice the fear represented by the near verticality of allocation to this category during the debt ceiling crisis of Summer 2011, and then the resumption of the trend upward.

Another such episode will be upon us shortly.

Bush Tax Cuts Made Permanent, Obama Tax Cuts Expire, Payroll Tax Rockets 33%

And Rush Limbaugh says Obama won a "massive victory"?

It depends on your point of view, doesn't it? If you have a Republican bias, you think George Bush won, which he obviously did. The permanent adoption of Bush's tax cuts by the opposition is a vindication, which Rush somehow can't bring himself to crow about, let alone even acknowledge. If you have a Democratic bias, you think Obama won.

No wonder a caller just phoned in to tell Rush to stop campaigning for the Democrats. She rightly perceives Rush to be making a political mistake, to which Rush responds he's been the best campaigner against the Democrats for 25 years, but to no avail, by his own admission.

Has Rush Limbaugh been good for America? His own answer is No!

Maybe it's time for Rush to quit! 

Rich Radio Talkers To Make Bazillions Off AMT Fix And Don't Know It!

The New York Times reported the cost to the federal government of the permanent AMT fix over the next decade at $1.8 trillion, here, based on the findings of the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Do you know what that means?

If something costs the federal government something, it means it saves someone something, namely, the (mostly) rich taxpayers who pay the damn thing, who now get to bear the blame in the liberal media for increasing the deficit over the next decade because of it. That's a good thing to a conservative, last time I checked (keeping the money, not getting the blame), unless you are a conservative radio talk show host whose stupidity is exceeded only by the size of his paycheck. (Sean Hannity is so stupid he's actually criticizing the fiscal cliff deal because it does just that, increase the deficit. Someone should tell him he's just adopted the liberal argument that tax cuts increase the deficit, not that it would do any good). Teams Limbaugh, Hannity, Ingraham and Beck really ought to call their CPAs before they continue shooting their mouths off about what a massive victory Obama just achieved on the backs of the rich. The irony here is that while Obama thinks he just won a free Cadillac, it turned out to be a Pontiac from Rent-A-Heap, delivered by Rush, Sean and Glenn. They made Laura drive.

When are you stupid people out there in radio land going to get it? Like this guy does:

"The AMT fix, like the Medicare 'doc fix' was an end of year ritual that couldn’t be resolved permanently.  Why you may ask?  Because any permanent fix would reflect in the CBO’s deficit and debt estimates for the years going forward.  Fixing the AMT for any one year was considered a cost for that particular year, but the CBO would base their estimates by current law, which would have the AMT not being fixed for the next year and every year afterwards.  Fixing the AMT for one year is a cost of 92 billion dollars.  A permanent fix it for the next ten years costs almost a trillion dollars.  From a purely crass, political position, having the costs of a permanent fix to the AMT and Bush income tax cuts accrued under the Obama administration ( two items that Republicans wanted to do but could never find the money for):

Priceless.

However all is not well in conservative talk radio land.  I made it a point to listen to what I think was a fair cross section of conservative radio for their take on all things fiscal cliffdom, and I must say, it was a muddled mess of incoherence."

Nov. Unemployment Revised UP To 7.8%, Dec. At 7.8%

One revision to reported unemployment for 2012 went down, from 8.3% to 8.2% (July), and one went up, from 7.7% to 7.8% (November), a wash.

December unemployment comes in at 7.8%.

Read the pdf from the BLS for yourself, here.

The number of people whose primary and secondary jobs are both part-time jobs has increased in the last year, December on December, by 6.4%, from 1.99 million to 2.118 million (Table A-16).

The total not in the labor force has increased 2.56% in the last year, adding 2.233 million for a total of 89.445 million Americans not in the labor force.

Why Isn't There A Single Conservative Radio Talker Happy About The Fiscal Deal?

Why isn't there a single conservative radio talker happy about the fiscal deal? Not a one is glad that Bush's lower tax rates have been made permanent for the vast majority of the American people.  I thought the Bush tax rates were every Republican's sine qua non, since at least 2003.

I see that the reported salary of Glenn Beck is $20 million/year. Sean Hannity reportedly makes north of $10 million/year on television at Fox, and $20 million/year on the radio. Rush Limbaugh makes way north of $38 million/year if you add in his signing bonus. And Laura Ingraham? Not very credible sources say she makes $15 million/year, but that was before the very recent relaunch of her radio show in 2013 under new, and presumably more attractive financial, circumstances. HuffPo here thinks her TV contract with Fox, filling-in for O'Reilly, is in the neighborhood of $1 million annually.

These four people dominate the talk radio airwaves from 9AM-6PM everyday, and they're all severely critical of the fiscal cliff deal. But there hasn't been a single word of gratitude to today's Republicans for getting the Bush tax rates made permanent for 99.7% of the American people.

The reason, of course, is that the radio talkers haven't the slightest feeling for the American people, the slightest understanding of their day to day experience, having left them long ago for the airy regions of the richest Americans in the top 0.3% income club where they now reside, the lowly victims of a paltry 13% tax increase agreed to by Obama and the Republicans, and they are livid.

Ungrateful wretches.

Chief Takeaway From The Fiscal Cliff Deal

The chief takeaway from the fiscal cliff deal is that, despite his many shortcomings, especially as a communicator, Vice President Joe Biden, who brokered the deal through Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, would actually make a much better president than his boss, Barack Obama.

I think I've been wrong about old Joe . . .

Rush Limbaugh Is Back And He's As Big An Idiot As Ever

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".

NYT: Fiscal Cliff Deal Gave Obama Only "Small Victories"

The New York Times, here at CNBC.com, admits it: Obama's victories in the fiscal cliff deal were small.

"For President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress, the fiscal deal reached this week is full of small victories that further their largest policy aims. ... White House officials took the path they did because they feared that a hardened stance on the debt ceiling would result in no deal at all: taxes would have risen on nearly everyone; automatic spending cuts would have begun; jobless benefits would have ended for many; and markets may have reacted badly.

"In the chaos that could have followed, the officials believed, a grand bargain would have been unlikely. If anything, Democrats -- worried they would be blamed for the economy's troubles, as the party holding the White House -- might have struggled to get a deal as good as this week's. Having won this round, Democrats still have compromises to offer Republicans in the next one, like changes to Social Security."

In other words, the expiration of the Bush tax cuts was a gun pointed at Obama's already terrible economy. There was no way the Democrats were going to let that gun go off and ruin the second term of the most overrated president in history. The stock markets knew it for months, which is why they never tanked even as the expiration date passed.

Here's a newsflash for the readers of the NYT: this deal is as good as it's going to get, and Democrats lost big even on the tax hike on the rich because, despite raising taxes on estates and on high incomes, dividends and capital gains, the AMT fix is going to cost the Feds (read: offset the taxes paid by the rich) $1.8 trillion over ten years. The price of that to the rich was barely $600 billion over ten years for those other things, about which so-called conservatives doth protest too much. The rich aren't going to be getting any less rich at all.

And the Times boasts that the deal reduces economic inequality. In their dreams. What a joke.

If Democrats won anything, it's that the economy isn't going to tank immediately under their mismanagement, and that they have more time to take the credit for the successes the Republicans achieve.

CNBC: "The Bush-Era tax cuts will be extended for 98% of Americans"

Actually it's 99.7%, but hey, who's counting.

Here.

Heh. Heh. Gloat. Gloat.

Liberal Henry Blodget Agrees: Pres. Bush/Republicans Won Battle Of Fiscal Cliff

Liberal Henry Blodget of BusinessInsider fame writes for YahooFinance, reproduced here:

"Ever since the Bush Tax Cuts were first enacted in 2001, one goal of the Republican party has been to 'make the Bush Tax Cuts permanent.' ...

"The Republicans may not have gotten everything they wanted out of the Fiscal Cliff deal, but they got almost everything.

"And when it comes to the broader fiscal battle, the Republicans are winning: The federal government's tax revenues are at the lowest level as a percent of GDP in the past several decades.

"The Republicans, in other words, are well on their way to starving the beast."

Moody's Warns Lack Of Deficit Reduction Could Affect AAA Rating Negatively

As reported by Reuters, here:

"On the other hand, lack of further deficit reduction measures could affect the rating negatively," Moody's said.

Moody's placed the U.S. credit rating on a negative outlook August 3, 2011 when the Congress and the White House wrestled over a relatively routine measure of raising the debt ceiling to the point where the United States was on the brink of default before hammering out a deal.

That political impasse and near financial calamity prompted rival rating agency Standard & Poor's to take the unprecedented move of cutting the U.S. credit rating to AA-plus from AAA.

George Will Gives But One Cheer For George W. Bush, Fiscal Cliff Winner

Here:

"Third, one December winner was George W. Bush because a large majority of Democrats favored making permanent a large majority of his tax cuts. December’s rancor disguised bipartisan agreement: Both parties flinch from cliff-related tax increases and spending decreases. But neither the increases nor decreases would have tamed the current $1 trillion-plus budget deficit nor made a discernible dent in the 87-times-larger unfunded liabilities of the entitlement state."

The Youth Vote: Suckers Overpaying For HealthCare

So says Mish, here:

The fact of the matter is youth overpay for health-care as the benefits primarily go to the elderly. Obama needed a pool of fresh suckers to overpay for health-care costs to keep the system solvent for a bit longer.

George Bush Vindicated: Dems Make His Tax Rates Permanent

"I won? That doesn't make any sense."

Stock Markets Love Tax Certainty, Why Not Republicans?

Bloomberg Headline Is Complete BS: Conflates Payroll Tax Cut With Income Tax Deal

The headline at Bloomberg here is total bullshit: "Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households".

The end of Obama's temporary payroll tax cut, the cause of almost everyone's tax increase, has nothing to do with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, but that doesn't stop Bloomberg from lying about it, with a little help from the so-called non-partisan Tax Policy Center:

The budget deal passed by the U.S. Senate today would raise taxes on 77.1 percent of U.S. households, mostly because of the expiration of a payroll tax cut, according to preliminary estimates from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington.

More than 80 percent of households with incomes between $50,000 and $200,000 would pay higher taxes. Among the households facing higher taxes, the average increase would be $1,635, the policy center said. A 2 percent payroll tax cut, enacted during the economic slowdown, is being allowed to expire as of yesterday.

The Senate deal does nothing to raise taxes on anybody except the very rich. The absence of a provision extending Obama's temporary payroll tax cut for another year does. The latter had nothing to do with the expiring Bush tax provisions, which Democrats just overwhelmingly voted to make permanent.

There's only one way to save the failing Obama: George W. Bush's tax rates.

Speaker Boehner Wins One For The Sipper

The 112th Congress just made the evil Bush tax cuts permament, and conservatives think they've lost?

People who think such things are not terribly intelligent.

Really rich people lost a little (a 13% tax increase on the backs of the top 0.3% of wage earners, who will promptly elect not to take income in the form of wages). Meanwhile the Bush tax rates are set in stone indefinitely for the remaining 99.7% of us. I say let's drink to the 2013 13% tax increase. It'll never hurt them much anyway.

Liberals voted for this. Do you understand what that means? While certain Republicans are whining loudly today that they just overturned a decades long stand against increasing tax rates and suddenly became hypocrites who can't live with themselves any longer for doing so, liberals had to cry uncle and vote in massive numbers for George Bush's tax cuts to save Obama's sorry ass. Who's the hypocrite, huh?!

The 112th Congress voted 346-175 to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, nearly 2-1, and WE LOST?! The only thing Republicans lost was their strategy of trying to link spending cuts to a tax agreement, which was not very wise. So it didn't work. Big deal. Quit whining. Declare victory. Move on. Republicans continue to hold the purse strings. So tighten them. The sequester is an opportunity. The debt ceiling is an opportunity.

I'd say it was liberals and Democrats who lost, and lost big.

Bar owner John Boehner just won one for the sipper, with a lot of help from Ol' Kentucky.

Pour me another.

Republicans Are So Stupid They Don't Even Know They Won

The Republican tax regime of George W. Bush, vilified by Democrats as the source of everything wrong with the country since 2007 when Nancy Pelosi took over as Speaker of House, was made permanent last night, mostly by Democrats and liberal Republicans, and there's narry a voice on the right crowing about the victory. Instead they're all eating crow, and in public, complaining about how they couldn't support tax increases on the rich or about the lack of spending cuts.

To the first point, they don't call Republicans the party of the rich for nothing. They have opened their mouths wide today and removed all doubt. And when it comes to the spending side, Republicans' mistake all along has been to link spending decisions to a tax package. Without a fixed lodestar of revenue, debates about spending have no point of reference. But now, happily, they do, no thanks to them. It is sad that what finally gave permanence to the Bush tax rates was Democrat fear of booking another recession by sucking money out of people's wallets which normally would get spent, crashing GDP. Saving Obama's reputation and his second term demanded it, who now thinks he just won the Cadillac when all it is is a Pontiac. There's plenty of incompetence to go around.

The Washington Post here has the vote breakdown:

The House voted 257 to 167 to send the measure to Obama for his signature; the vote came less than 24 hours after the Senate overwhelmingly approved the legislation. ...

The bill drew 85 votes from Republicans and 172 from Democrats, meaning well more than half of its support came from the Democratic minority.

With 151 Republicans voting “no,” the GOP tally fell far short of a majority of the GOP caucus. That broke a long-standing preference by Boehner to advance only bills that could draw the support of a majority of his Republican members.

Senator DeMented Jim Bailed On Fiscal Cliff Compromise Vote

Senator Jim DeMint bailed on the fiscal cliff compromise vote.

People wonder why.

Answer: it's called going Galt.

Reminder: Elected Democrats in Wisconsin did the same thing by fleeing the state to try to prevent a quorum. Not that that was the situation here. But nevertheless . . .

Really bad form, there, Jimmy boy.

Have fun wrecking the Heritage Foundation, if it were possible to wreck it even more than it already is.

OK, How Long Before The Ratings Agencies Downgrade Us Again?

I'd take bets, but that's illegal, so I'll just wager a hearty pat on the back that the next debt downgrade takes three months, tops.

Futures Soar On Fiscal Cliff Compromise

George Bush Beats Obama: NYT Says Republican Fantasies Fulfilled By Democrats

I won? Hey, that doesn't make any sense.

For once The New York Times gets it right, here, emphases added:

Just a few years ago, the tax deal pushed through the Senate in the early hours on Tuesday would have been a Republican fiscal fantasy, a sweeping bill that locks in virtually all of the Bush-era tax cuts, exempts almost all estates from taxation, and enshrines the former president's credo that dividends and capital gains should be taxed gently. ...

... a hard-fought compromise that [Republicans] could have easily framed as a victory. ...

The bill would do much more than head off the automatic tax increases and spending cuts. It would fix in place a tax code that for more than a decade has caused struggles over regular sunset provisions, temporary solutions and fleeting incentives. The bill would finally make permanent five of the six income tax rates created in 2001 by the first Bush tax cut. It would codify Mr. Bush's successful push, in 2003, to make tax rates on dividends and capital gains equal so that one form of investment income is not favored over the other. ...

The 10-year price includes $762 billion to lock in the Bush tax rates of 10 percent, 25 percent, 28 percent and 33 percent, along with some of the Bush-era 35 percent bracket; $354 billion to continue Mr. Bush's expanded child credit; and $339 billion to secure Mr. Bush's 15 percent capital gains and dividend rates for families earning less than $450,000. The alternative minimum tax fix would cost the Treasury $1.8 trillion, according to the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.

Democrats say they had little choice. The Bush White House and Republican Congresses structured the tax cuts so that letting them expire would be politically difficult. Add the threat of across-the-board spending cuts if Congress does nothing, and President Obama felt he had no choice but to extend most of the tax cuts or watch the economy sink back into recession.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!

House Votes For Fiscal Compromise

As reported here at 11:11 PM tonight:

By a vote of 257 to 167, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives approved a bill that fulfills President Barack Obama's re-election promise to raise taxes on top earners.

Businessman Senator Ron Johnson, R-WI, Votes For Fiscal Compromise

The Washington Post reports here:

Five Senate Republicans also rejected the measure, including tea party favorites Rand Paul (Ky.), Mike Lee (Utah) and Marco Rubio (Fla.), a potential contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. But 40 others voted for it, including such GOP leaders on tax-and-spending policy as Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.) and Ronald H. Johnson (Wis.), a tea party star who frequently consults with conservatives in the House.

Key features of the legislation are attractive to conservatives, as noted in the story:

• The payroll tax cut expires, a recklessly irresponsible diminution of Social Security to welfare.
• Obama's pay raise for federal workers is eliminated.
• Estate tax exemption limits remain as they were and get indexed to inflation.
• The Bush tax rates, except for the top 0.3%, are made permanent for everyone.
• It's a Pyrrhic victory for Obama because instead of $4.5 trillion in new revenue, he gets $0.6 trillion.