Sounds like you both spend way too much time thinking about this.

Just enjoy the show!

>> ^legacy0100:

Sounds like you've caught a serious case of the fandomitis.
I remember having a similar conversation with this guy from a group lunch. I brought up Modern Family and how it was getting popular, and he said that he couldn't stand watching Modern Family because they were all 'fake' and their acting made him feel uncomfortable. He said he couldn't quite put his finger on it, only that he kept saying that the actors were overreacting to the situations.
I told him I felt the same way about Portlandia and how I felt very uncomfortable when the actors were being very aggressive with their ultra-liberal agendas and stop watching whenever they were about to have another fit. This was ironic because the person who didn't like Modern Family absolutely loved Portlandia and had no problem watching it.
For the record, in my subjective opinion I felt that the person I was talking with was a very giddy person, like the personalities in Modern Family, while I sometimes can be an argumentative smart mouth when it comes to certain topics.
Perhaps we were seeing a little bit of ourselves in these shows, and it was making us uncomfortable? Weird, eh?
>> ^alien_concept:
>> ^VoodooV:
I both love and hate this show.
I hate how it reinforces all the shittiest stereotypes, the flamboyant gay couple, the straight couple with the man is the bumbling idiot and the woman who he is ridiculously lucky to have.
But yeah, it is a damned funny show.

I honestly don't think they write these characters stereotypically at all! That's why I find it so hilarious, you think you know what you're going to get then they play it out completely differently. Like they're a gay couple and they do gay flamboyant things, but one is ginger and one is fat and they're certainly not the perfect adoptive parents, they fuck it up all the time. And Phil and Claire, yeah she's way out of his league at first glance, but then you realise what a complete mentalist she is, and how she's wonderful but difficult to love if you weren't a husband who understands he's punching above his weight and also autistic so can let most of her quirks go. And then there's the old rich guy with the trophy wife and the precocious step kid. I can't even think of anything usual about that routine

Sounds like you've caught a serious case of the fandomitis.

I remember having a similar conversation with this guy from a group lunch. I brought up Modern Family and how it was getting popular, and he said that he couldn't stand watching Modern Family because they were all 'fake' and their acting made him feel uncomfortable. He said he couldn't quite put his finger on it, only that he kept saying that the actors were overreacting to the situations.

I told him I felt the same way about Portlandia and how I felt very uncomfortable when the actors were being very aggressive with their ultra-liberal agendas and stop watching whenever they were about to have another fit. This was ironic because the person who didn't like Modern Family absolutely loved Portlandia and had no problem watching it.

For the record, in my subjective opinion I felt that the person I was talking with was a very giddy person, like the personalities in Modern Family, while I sometimes can be an argumentative smart mouth when it comes to certain topics.

Perhaps we were seeing a little bit of ourselves in these shows, and it was making us uncomfortable? Weird, eh?

>> ^alien_concept:

>> ^VoodooV:
I both love and hate this show.
I hate how it reinforces all the shittiest stereotypes, the flamboyant gay couple, the straight couple with the man is the bumbling idiot and the woman who he is ridiculously lucky to have.
But yeah, it is a damned funny show.

I honestly don't think they write these characters stereotypically at all! That's why I find it so hilarious, you think you know what you're going to get then they play it out completely differently. Like they're a gay couple and they do gay flamboyant things, but one is ginger and one is fat and they're certainly not the perfect adoptive parents, they fuck it up all the time. And Phil and Claire, yeah she's way out of his league at first glance, but then you realise what a complete mentalist she is, and how she's wonderful but difficult to love if you weren't a husband who understands he's punching above his weight and also autistic so can let most of her quirks go. And then there's the old rich guy with the trophy wife and the precocious step kid. I can't even think of anything usual about that routine

>> ^VoodooV:

I both love and hate this show.
I hate how it reinforces all the shittiest stereotypes, the flamboyant gay couple, the straight couple with the man is the bumbling idiot and the woman who he is ridiculously lucky to have.
But yeah, it is a damned funny show.


I honestly don't think they write these characters stereotypically at all! That's why I find it so hilarious, you think you know what you're going to get then they play it out completely differently. Like they're a gay couple and they do gay flamboyant things, but one is ginger and one is fat and they're certainly not the perfect adoptive parents, they fuck it up all the time. And Phil and Claire, yeah she's way out of his league at first glance, but then you realise what a complete mentalist she is, and how she's wonderful but difficult to love if you weren't a husband who understands he's punching above his weight and also autistic so can let most of her quirks go. And then there's the old rich guy with the trophy wife and the precocious step kid. I can't even think of anything usual about that routine

Have you considered that "the lazy asshole" who gets your money in the end might be the rich guy in the video?>> ^nintendcore2:

yeah money is evil we should let the government tell us how to spend our money and how much we get. We should just stop striving to be successful because if you become wealthy we become evil.
Yay Obama and Socialism I want to work hard then give half my earnings to some lazy asshole because that person deserves it

Just because one clip focuses on it doesn't mean that the entire movement is fixated on one stat.

All I ever see from the liberal left's ProgLibDytes are clips that focus on the 'wealth disparity' between the rich and poor. I've never seen the ProgLibDyte clip that focuses on something like median income. That's because focusing on median income tells a completely opposing story. The point is that ProgLibDytes and and left as a whole focus only on a narrow band of stats that drives thier agenda-based narrative. They ignore huge vistas of other facts, studies, research, thought, and evidence because it cuts the legs out from under thier world view and makes them look like idiots.

Barak Obama himself is a CLASSIC example of this narrow-minded kind of agenda-driven cherry-picking of reality. Every time that specimen opens his mouth it is to say, "The experts I have spoken to agree with me..." And what about the bazillions of experts he DIDN'T speak to which all disagree with him, or contradict him? Of course is his empty noggin such people don't exist - or don't matter. The same issue plagues neolib leftists across whole spectrums. Global Warming, Abortion, Economics - you name it - the left picks a tiny slice of carefully selected grain of sand to tell a story, and ignores whole beaches of sand that says the opposite.

Not that the right doesn't suffer from the same problem. It is not an issue limited to only the left. However, the left is more aggressively self-important, pious, and arrogant about their narrative - and far more inclined to try to base bad legislation on it.

How is raising the marginal tax rate on the super rich a few percentage points "communist" or even "socialist" on an objective scale?

The US tax rate (both corporate and private) is already one of the highest in the world. I counter your question with another. "What good is raising the marginal tax rate on the super rich a few percentage points going to do?" You could confiscate every penny the top 10% of America has and it would not get America's government out of the red even for one year - let alone for the 15 trillion we have in debts - and the SIXTY-FOUR TRILLION we have in 'unfunded liabilities' such as Social Security. There isn't enough money in the entire economy to pay for all the spending the government is doing and/or proposing with its leftist big-government agendas. The economic problem is one of spending - not taxation.

But you're pretending that the income gap between super rich and poor is static, which misses the entire point. It's not static. It fluctuates.

Irrelevant. The gap between the top 1% and the bottom 5% means nothing. It is immaterial statisitically speaking. If I earn a million a year compared to a guy that earns 30K then he makes 3% of what I do. A year later I am earning 1,050,000 a year and he is earning 28K for a new adjusted difference of 2.66% of what I earn. Head for the hills, Ma Barker! Since when is this -0.34% shift of any value. Or let's go the other way and now I'm only earning 950,000 and he's earning 32,000 for a 3.25% How is that helping either the rich guy OR the poor guy? Or let's take the real world situation that Barak Obama brought us and BOTH of them go down while the government's income skyrockets. Wow - that's really benefiting society isn't it?

The wealth gap is utterly irrelevant - static or dynamic. And for the record - I never assume ANY economic stat is static except for one. Government growth. Government baseline budgeting has created an untenable economic drag on the nation because it continues to grow at 8% to 10% Year over Year no matter what the economy is doing. That's the only static economic stat out there - and it is not a good one.

(BTW, what a good person you are to say whose jobs are of value and whose aren't!)

Right back at you Clyde. Who are you to decide what an inside-trader's job should or shouldn't be worth? The IT generates real profit for his company, and they compensate him to keep him doing it. Who are you - or Cunk - or any other ProgLibDyte to come along with the cheek to say they don't deserve it?

I'm advocating the gov't make it moderately more equal by raising the rich's taxes, and ease up on the poor and middle class.

The mistake you and the left make is that for some reason you think that 'taxes' make things 'more equal'. They don't except in one way... Taxes make everyone equally miserable. Money goes into government and dissappears. Taxing the rich doesn't make things better for the poor or the middle class. It only gives government more power - which is the last thing our bloated federal system needs right now. The poor pay virtually no income taxes - so it is quite impossible to 'ease up' on them except at the state & sales tax level. The middle class? Hey - anything helps but in the average budget we're talking a few hundred bucks a year. I don't have a problem with the rich paying thier 'fair share' (as leftists so vaguely love to put it). But the rich already ARE paying thier fair share and then some. If they jacked 'the rich' tax rate up to 90% it wouldn't do jack-squat for 'the poor' or the middle class.

Tax capital gains like it's income, subject to the same brackets, etc.

America's captial gains taxes are already the #2 highest in the world. Gapital gains are treated differently for a reason. This is another thing that most leftists prove themselves woefully ignorant about whenever they talk about it. And again - even if we did that how exactly is that going to 'help' anyone? All that does is provide you lefties with an ephemeral, meaningless sense of shadenfruede which you can suckle on as you trudge back to your government-mandated hovels - properly pacified with the meaningless knowledge that a rich guy is getting taxed some more. That is until you realize he's still rich, you're still poor, and only the government got something out of the deal. How leftists can be so stupid on the subject of economics I will never know, but I can only tip my hat to the depths of human gullibility.

I don't see how this double standard exists. At some point in history there was an agreement that these people would get their pensions due to their employment with the government entities.

The same goes for companies like GM, they made agreements to pay their employees.

It's not as if these two entities are some old senile man someone took advantage of, they are made up of many people who at the time thought it was a fair deal.

Now, we have discussions about how it's unfair to expect these companies to pay for agreements they made and are trying to pass things that not only absolve them of what they owe, but then also try to make it so in the future they don't have to negotiate.

On the other side of the coin, we have individuals who have lost their ability to pay and no one is saying that they shouldn't have to pay what they owe whether it's their fault or not they are in that circumstance. The vast majority of them are people who had no hand in creating the financial mess we are in except for maybe buying a house at a vastly inflated price.

So the individual is supposed to pay back their debts, but with companies and governments it's cool if we just vote away their obligations or bail them out.


And then we have the other hypocrisy where the guys elected into government, who are making good money with benefits and pretty much have job security for their term unless they really screw the pooch. They want to tell people who are hired and have to perform their job based on some sort of testing, performance, and other criteria that they can't negotiate. These same people are also held back in their pay rate by time served instead of performance based in some areas of government employment. For this they used to gain some job security (not really true anymore due to cost cutting), good benefits packages, and some retirement security.

We have these discussions about taking their benefits or making them pay more, removing retirement benefits for current and past employees (I don't agree with retro-active cancellation at all, they should pay retired employees, pay partially to current employed based on length of employment, and anyone with very short employment spans or signing on after the passing don't get anything), and keeping them on these neutered advancement ideas they have. There's also massive nepotism in government, which they are not trying to fix..because it allows them to influence business opportunities in their favor during and after their employment whether elected or hired.

Try any civilian work at a military base whether contracted or employed directly by the government, it's full of nepotism. New hires who know someone will hire in on unrelated departments and shoot right past you whether you're a long time employee or know more than them...because they know a guy. They are really blatant with the nepotism.

It's wrong how government operates, especially the higher you go. Negotiation makes it possible for the lower level guys to at least attempt to keep them honest. Instead of making deals and then retroactively changing the terms once they've also gotten rid of the ability to negotiate.

It's not the individuals fault that the government can no longer meet the obligations they made because they removed too many regulations and let the banks and lenders go hog wild for almost a decade. I'm sure if they looked around a bit, they might find some government officials who had a massively growing net worth to accompany that decade of uncontrolled growth. Excusing debts to fix problems they created should not even be up for discussion, it sets a precedent to make bad faith deals to get what they want. And would create the next "exploitable" avenue for all these nepotism filled departments.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Thanks to this vote, Ohioan taxpayers are now BACK on the hook for 66 billion dollars in government union pensions. That's JUST the pensions, nothing else.
Times will be tough, but it will be tougher on those who choose to take advantage of the working class.
This is how the people who control the emotional state of left-wingers fool you.
"We're losing a hand, but that's OK, because the Rich Guy is losing an arm!"

Thanks to this vote, Ohioan taxpayers are now BACK on the hook for 66 billion dollars in government union pensions. That's JUST the pensions, nothing else.

Times will be tough, but it will be tougher on those who choose to take advantage of the working class.

This is how the people who control the emotional state of left-wingers fool you.

"We're losing a hand, but that's OK, because the Rich Guy is losing an arm!"







>> ^jcf79:

You don't get this type of turnout with this type of a percentage voting "no" on an issue with a failure to understand simple text (sorry you couldn't understand it) And I'm not happy, by the way, if that makes you feel better. We won this fight, but I'm sure that Kucinich has plan B in effect to make the working class feel the hurt, however... Times will be tough, but it will be tougher on those who choose to take advantage of the working class. We know struggle, we know sacrifice, we are the 99% and we have shown that we can prevail.
>> ^quantumushroom:
I read the link. It explains NOTHING of what the amendment does or does not do.
I lost nothing, you're the one who got screwed; at least you're happy.
>> ^jcf79:
Dear Quantum Mushroom, as an Ohioan who votes and knew the issues fully going into the election, and who voted against SB5 aka issue 2 (Also, here's a link to the "tricky" wording of the bill. http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/upload/ballotboard/2011/2-language.pdf I was glad I could take a few weeks to fully comprehend the wording, especially the part that read "A 'yes" vote means you approve of the law. A 'no' vote means you reject the law" I mean, what does "yes" and "no" reaaaallly mean here. Please, QM, if you could help straighten this out you'd be doing a great service to us all. Anyways...) I guess what I really want to say is.... Nyah nyah nyah We win, you lose. Pffffffffff.

Propaganda in the same light as the rich guys going on TV and telling us lower taxes will create more jobs. Except this one has some historical data to back up the claims, while the "job creation through lower taxation" has zero evidence. In fact if they had any evidence it would be very recent, burning brightly in our memories to offset the "propaganda" of this video.

This site apparently has about half a dozen people who are of the 1% and feel threatened by the videos with any challenging information being out there without dissenting commentary below it. See any OWS video for pages of repeated arguments.

Alta Vista>> ^SlipperyPete:

>> ^Trancecoach:
anyone in Mountain View who says they worked in a start-up and is presently retired, you can bet dollars to donuts they're talking about the one you'd guess.

Ask Jeeves?

>> ^Trancecoach:

anyone in Mountain View who says they worked in a start-up and is presently retired, you can bet dollars to donuts they're talking about the one you'd guess.


Ask Jeeves?

Top 1% pays 22.7% of Federal taxes and have 17% of the income. The bottom 90% pay 47.8% with 59.8% of all income. Those numbers are based on verifiable fact

So? Rejigger and you can say, "The bottom 75% pay 32% of the taxes with 45.7% of all income. Any way you slice it, the 'wealthy' are paying the lion's share of the taxes, with a smaller percentage of the nation's total wealth. The rich are paying their fair share and then some.

It has always been that way and I defy you to find a time and place in history when things worked differently

First things first. Your entire premise is wrong. The Bush tax cuts were not "Tax cuts for the rich". They were tax cust for EVERYONE. It is only the neoliberal spin echo-chamber, zombie brains of leftists that calls them 'tax cuts for the rich'. Any sensible, fair analysis proves conclusively that the 'rich' ended up paying an even HIGHER percentage of the tax burden after the Bush cuts. THe only way any person can possibly believe they were 'for the rich' is if they turn their brains off, become absolute simpletons, and look ONLY at the total dollars rather than at the whole picture of what happened.

You guys on the left are going to have to face some reality at some point. Any tax 'cut' is going to overwhelmingly favor 'the rich' because they are the ones paying the taxes. The poor and middle class are either paying zero taxes, or get a tax refund every year.

You neolibs aren't targeting the 'rich'. You are targeting the upper-middle class. Yeah - REAL "progessive" of you jerks to go along with Obama's marxist rhetoric and try to kneecap folks that earn a piddly 200,000 a year. Oooo - yeah - those are "rich guys" who "aren't paying their fair share". You guys are a bunch of jackhats, you know that? Those 200K a year guys are small business owners who live paycheck to paycheck just as much as the poor do.

And Obama and Buffet are total @$$es for lying to the entire country and trying to pass off capital gains as if it was the same thing as income. Really, just goes to show how much neolibs have to warp reality in order to try to sucker the stupid and the intellectually weak. It is to Videosift's complete and utter shame that it has such high percentage of dupes who are so easily manipulated by lies and class warfare rhetoric.

It's true. When a rich guy has a tough time, he has to sell his fifth mansion.. THE HORROR.

Don't worry Baratunde, in the media and to the rest of America, Trump has gone from this odd eccentric rich guy who says crazy shit to get ratings to an absolute tool. He is laughed at by the press and his credibility and the respect of his piers has become nil.

In the racial overtones of the entire thing, I do agree and every single prominent republican who supported birtherism if even with such simple words 'I take him at his word' will not only suffer in their next elections but also in the respect of their fellow Americans. For today there isn't a single person in the country who doesn't know that at its heart, racism has reared its ugly head and far to many a man and women in public office all but put their stamp of approval upon it.

That said I believe the heart of this entire debacle isn't racism, but rather that Republicans are frightened. Their consistences are frightened. The future is bleak for the republican party as their base continues to shrink and the number of those who vote democratically continues to rise. This isn't the end of this issue and if Barack Obama is reelected, something similar will certainly appear again. Just remember that the republicans can be blamed only so far as their fear will drive them to irrationality.

I totally agree that it's not simple. That's why all of this bothers me so much. Congress members like to see it black and white, what they want (and their contributors want) should be kept or voted in. What they don't want (and their contributors don't want) is communist/socialist/anti-american/against God/whatever. There absolutely no sway with these people, and that's because they are paid to think the way they do. It's not the best interest of the country, it's the best interest of who paid them off.

It's pretty blatant when the people who are making out like bandits during a very bad economic recession if doesn't become a depression and still want more tax cuts and profits, while the food banks don't have enough food and people are literally losing their houses because they won't extend unemployment benefits.

And trust me, unemployment in the US does not pay enough to cover what you would have made with a job. Especially when healthcare is primarily provided by companies and not by a universal health plan, people simply can't afford coverage on unemployment and they are not provided coverage unless they meet stringent criteria.

And it has been shown that unemployment benefits stimulate the economy, for every dollar put into unemployment compensation a 1.60 or some such is generated. Rich tax cuts don't even come close to generating that, not even in the same ballpark. And they are supposedly the people who make the world go round if you listen to the bought and paid for Congress members.


In reply to this comment by Smugglarn:
While I agree with som of waht you say there is a caveat to all those wonderful programs. In my country (Sweden) the model of governance was that the ruling party (Social Democrats) essentially paid their voters with unemployment programs and social security benefits. You could actually earn less working than going on benefits. Immigrants who by nature of their endeavours are quite industrius and hard working quickly became pacified and dependant on the system. The only thing asked of the poorer classes is to vote "correctly" every four years. Remember though - they are only loyal voters for as long as they are not suffering as much . As soon as they get successful they get the full force of the tax system and change alliances. It stifles entrepreneurship and innovation.

Thankfully the Social Democrats were voted out. Regrettably, there is a high unemployment rate, a nationalist party gained a lot of seats in the parliament and violence plagues the projects and large cities around the country.


The left seeing the voters abandon them cry out for expanded immigration and more refugees. At first glance this could be thought of as a compassionate move - but in reality they want more party members to feed the machine. On the other hand the right want to expand immigration as well - for specialists nad other high quality workers - but also for cheap labour obviously.

What I'm rambling about is that it is not that simple.

In reply to this comment by Porksandwich:
Really no one knows what will fix the economy, often times opinion of the economy means just as much as actual changes. If people think the economy is in the toilet, they play safe with their money....if they think it's great they invest in more risky things (to me the tech bubbles demonstrate this, they don't know WTF they were investing in half the time but it sounded good).

But it strikes me as odd when you see a sudden decline in the economy and opinion of it tank....that they don't undo what they changed a few years prior to the economic downturn. Yes there are outside influences and other hard to account for things. But if tax cuts on the rich stimulated the economy in a beneficial way, we would not be in the situation we are in. Yes bank deregulation and other stupid moves, plus a blind payout to people who abused the system really hurt us. But the people who made those decisions also tend to be rich people with rich friends, after all it takes millions upon millions to campaign for any federal level job and you're going to notice the guy giving you a couple hundred thousand versus the guy who gives you 10 bucks.

As for making up the taxes in other methods...sales, consumption, sin tax, whatever you want to refer to. 1% of the population can go day to day without buying as much or can go to lengths to offset or remove the tax burdens they would otherwise face if they have many resources at their disposal. They could simply live somewhere else where those taxes do not effect them. And the rest of the people making, I think it's 250k or less a year to be the non-rich, they simply do not have the resources to avoid living near their jobs and are going to have the basic necessity expenditures as any rich guy.

I mean we all have things we need in common.
Food

Shelter (electricity, gas)

Toiletries (unless we're gonna wipe our asses with tree bark and not wear deodorant or brush our teeth),

Methods of transport (which is usually going to be a car, most places have pathetic public transport and riding a bike in sweltering heat or freezing cold is not going to cut it)

Medical - which at this point in time you have to be pretty destitute or disabled to receive government help with. And everyone at some point in their life is going to need medical assistance whether it's through a fault of their own or not. It's a stupid system where if you can't afford your treatment "RIGHT NOW" you may end up crippled and a burden on everyone else for the rest of your life over a few thousand dollars.

Rich people don't need to eat any more than poor people, they might have richer tastes but they can survive on poor people food. Rich people don't need any more than the minimum shelter. Same with toiletries, fancy colognes and perfumes are frills. BMWs versus 20 year old clunkers, rich can drive beaters too. Medical, rich people are going to have the basic care they need when they need it at every stage of their life....because they are rich and of course luck in genetic lotteries count for a lot.

So unless every rich person lives extravagantly INSIDE the US at all times, taxing them on anything but income is only going to get what they spend money on inside the country...even though they make their money and protect their money and assets utilizing what everyone else helps subsidize - roads, utilities, police, firefighters, etc.

It's the "I got mine, so fuck you." attitude that seems to be popular now. You can see it in a lot of things, unemployment extensions (I got a job, so fuck you.), universal health care (I'm not sick, so fuck you.), public transportation (I own a car, so fuck you.), Visa workers/offshoring (I can get cheaper labor, so fuck you.), etc.

So we end up with absolutely no positive future growth besides what you can afford to do for yourself. And we have more and more people falling onto government welfare programs where they are going to find themselves stuck until the problems become so blatantly apparent that no one can deny that paying your share benefits you just as much as it benefits others.