Title: Biden: First thing we gotta do is go after people clipping coupons in the stock market Source:
Hot Air URL Source:https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morr ... b9fbd11ac091829e9a2770363e45c0 Published:Oct 16, 2019 Author:Ed Morrissey Post Date:2019-10-16 12:38:17 by IbJensen Keywords:None Views:1776 Comments:8
Last night’s debate may not have had a clear winner, but Joe Biden might not have even been in the running. In the last major debate, Biden advised African-American parents to make sure they had their “record player on at night” in order to build their child’s vocabulary, an answer that was considered both racist and hopelessly anachronistic. That set up last night’s apparent stumble — or maybe, maybe an attempt at humor that ended in a faceplant.
Clipping coupons? We”ll get back to that, but it wasn’t Biden’s only problem in this answer — although you’d never know it by reading the New York Times transcript of the exchange. I included in bold what they left out:
BIDEN: No, look. Demonizing wealth — what I talked about is how you get things done. And the way to get things done is take a look at the tax code right now. The idea — we have to start rewarding work, not just wealth. I would eliminate the capital gains tax — I would, I would raise the capital gains tax to the highest rate of 39.5 percent. I would double it. Because guess what? Why in God’s name should someone who is clipping coupons in the stock market pay a lower tax rate than someone who in fact is, like I said — a schoolteacher and a firefighter? It’s ridiculous, and they pay a lower tax. Secondly, the idea that we, in fact, engage in this notion that there are — there’s $1.64 trillion in tax loopholes. You can’t justify at minimum $600 billion of that. We could eliminate it all. I could go into detail had I the time.
Did Biden get confused about which audience he was addressing? That’s not really a mere slip of the tongue. Eliminating the capital gains tax, a longtime conservative/Club for Growth position that has not gained much traction in these populist times, and might be a bit anachronistic itself for that reason. It sounds as if Biden is having trouble keeping up and keeping his arguments straight, and that’s not a good look for a candidate who can’t manage to spike the football even with the other team mainly on the sidelines.
One has to wonder why the NYT didn’t transcribe that part of Biden’s answer, too. Do they make a habit of cleaning up Biden’s rhetorical missteps? If so, what other Biden-friendly edits have they made for their readers in the past?
It’s possible that Biden was being sardonic with his “clipping coupons in the stock market” line. It could be read as a sarcastic comment on the oh-so-tough lives billionaires lead, in a “while you’re broke and clipping coupons in the supermarket, these guys are clipping coupons in the stock market” class-warfare sense. It sounds like something a speech writer might have dreamed up for Biden to say as a lead-in to a typical class-warfare argument, a way to zing billionaires while charming his way into working-class hearts.
If so, Biden is terrible at delivering those punch lines. Even with that generous assumption, Biden injected only half of the zinger in the middle of a serious point that he’d already screwed up, as the NYT noticed as well. Put that together with his previous musings on the importance of record players in raising children, and it’s not charming at all. It looks more like a pattern that suggests Uncle Joe should seek retirement soon and maybe watch a little more Hee Haw than Maddow.
Finally, just on the substance of the answer, Biden’s still all wet. Even if one could wave a wand and eliminate $600 billion a year in deductions without harming the economy, that’s only a drop in the bucket when it comes to what Biden and his fellow Democrats want to add in spending. Medicare for All alone would add at least three trillion dollars a year, let alone the rest of the Green New Deal projects being pushed at these debates. Pretending that Biden and Democrats can lower the tax bill for the middle class while spending all that cash is even more incoherent than “clipping coupons in the stock market,” and Biden’s hardly the only one on stage suffering from that incoherence.
Poster Comment:
Biden is a colossal asshole and criminal. He and his drug-addled son should be in prison along with the Clinton trio and a host of others!
As regards clipping coupons in the stock market, yes, we understand that is a concept in the bond market, but, I suspect that Joe does not understand that difference. Big difference in the stock market and the bond market.
But Biden is essentially right. Stocks and bonds are passively invested money, and the profits/gains/dividends paid on them are taxed at a lower rate than a similar amount of wages - a MUCH lower rate.
That's not right. The differential should be eliminated, by bringing the capital gain and dividend taxes UP, and the wage taxes DOWN, to the same combined level, so that a dollar of gain, whether from labor or from clipping coupons, is taxed at the same rate. That's the right thing to do.
Woh, bro'. Looks like you've been spanked and sent to your wigwam in perpetual shame. LOL
Strangely, as I recall it, you were LF's first big Trump supporter when everyone else was supporting one of the sixteen losers of the 2016 GOP primaries. And you supported him all the way through the general election too. And some people here threw rocks at you about it the entire time. And you still seem to be supporting Trump over all challengers, GOP and Dem. Was there anyone else here at LF that supported Trump 100% like you did early on? My recollection is that you were the first and the biggest Trumper here, by far.
Can't win for losing, huh? And you don't even get any local satisfaction because you live in a deep Blue state where they'll outvote you no matter what.
I can see why you get a little philosophical about politics most of the time.
I'm still with Trump for the same reason I was with him originally: foreign policy, and especially good relations with Russia. In Syria, we see the fruits of that. We are getting out of a place we don't belong, and handing places over to the Russians as guardians of the locals, restorers of order. It's part of a great dance, and it is good. Bringing the wannabee Islamist Erdogan to heel is a nice touch as well.
We're getting the Wall (ah slowly!), and we've gotten the camps in Mexico, instead of in the USA.
China is playing ball and will negotiate a trade agreement. It will be imperfect, but it will continue to move in the right direction.
Trump has broken the balls of the warmongers - Bolton's firing, and the mouth-twisting frustration of the hawks in Congress is fun to see.
He broke the Mueller investigation, which was bullshit, and his polls have not lost even a fraction of a point due to the impeachment blah-blah. Everybody remembers what these Democrat turds did to Justice Kavanaugh. They have no credibility.
I do support single-payer Medicare, and wealth taxation, which makes Warren my Democrat pick. But she won't win against Trump, and even of she did, Congress won't give her either of those things.
So, I stand with Trump, but because strange things can happen in elections, IF the Democrat wins, I want it to be Warren, because universal Medicare and a high wealth tax are both things whose time has come.
So, I stand with Trump, but because strange things can happen in elections, IF the Democrat wins, I want it to be Warren, because universal Medicare and a high wealth tax are both things whose time has come.
She couldn't get it passed anyway, not in any meaningful form. The best you'd find is a tax code completely full of holes that could be exploited by the Dem tycoons and Wall Street fat cats. They've had extensive practice at writing such tax laws as you know.
As for Trump's re-election prospects, I liked this bit today.
According to a story over at Moody’s, the 45th President will keep his place at 1600 Pennsylvania for another 4 years if the economy holds up.
President Donald Trump looks likely to cruise to reelection next year under three different economic models Moody’s Analytics employed to gauge the 2020 race.
Barring anything unusual happening, the president’s Electoral College victory could easily surpass his 2016 win over Democrat Hillary Clinton, which came by a 304-227 count.
Moody’s based its projections on how consumers feel about their own financial situation, the gains the stock market has achieved during Trump’s tenure and the prospects for unemployment, which has fallen to a 50-year low. Should those variables hold up, the president looks set to get another four-year term.
The modeling has been highly accurate going back to the 1980 election, missing only once.
That one time that their model was wrong? Of course, it was the 2016 election where Donald Trump beat the wife of Bill Clinton.
The lowest electoral number Trump gets in these models is 289 which is above the 270 votes needed to win. The highest he gets is 352 which looks like a pipe dream to me.
This is all factored in on the economy doing well which under ANY OTHER President would be a safe, reliable gauge. However in the “Age of Trump” nothing is the same as it was prior to his election in Nov. of 2016 and you pretty much have to throw the rule book out and start rewriting it.
I live in the State of Michigan which Trump flipped to Republican for the first time since 1988. Team Bill’s wife did not take the threat serious that Michigan was up for grabs until the last 10 days of the election and they lost the state by 11,000 votes.
That is not going to happen again where the Democrats are asleep at the wheel.
. . .
I thought you might like that reporting, given your familiarity with Michigan. I was going to post it but you can't get many posts on political threads here at LF any more. It's all Flattardism and poking noses into other people's religious beliefs under various pretenses. Apparently, that's what the LF hordes go for now.
This is my view: if the economy holds up, Trump gets re-elected. If the economy collapses, Trump will be in trouble and Warren's ideas will have traction.
With Trump, there's little that is conventional. I think that people like me - the voters who took over the country and who were uncounted and not understood at all before the last election, STILL are not understood, because we have a set of desires that are not on the plates of the people who ask questions and write articles.
I always write about them here, and they variously aggravate the nervous conditions of folks on the right and on the left. Neither of those folks really understand that we're not POSTURING any more than they are, we're not taking positions to be difficult. We REALLY BELIEVE certain things are more important than the things they believe in, and with Trump, we knew we had one of us running, and we were right.
So, we don't lose our support for Trump when he is attacked - we've been attacked ourselves, all of us, for our beliefs, to the point that a lot of us don't talk about them anymore. But we know that we seized power with Trump, REAL power, and that we still hold it. So we don't judge Trump by the degree to which he is slowed down or temporarily defeated by our enemies. We expect that. We judge the degree to which he goes around them ANYWAY, how he litigates EVERY SINGLE THING, and eventually, at the high level courts, wins. And we note - therefore - the wisdom of packing the courts with Trump appointees, to make it easier and easier to get our way as time goes forward.
We see the Wall going up - ah slowly - but also, Mexico agreeing to set - and actually setting up - the detention camps IN MEXICO (at some Mexican expense) - because Trump is willing to link EVERYTHING - Trade policy, good relations, law enforcement cooperation, war - EVERYTHING - to what HE wants.
Immigration is a national security issue. We know that. Our political enemies, who want the immigration for THEIR reasons, don't know it and don't accept it. So when Trump declares the national emergency, their reactions vary from "He CAN'T be serious, who could BE such a buffoon" (Well, ME, I could, but, see, when you call me - who I know pretty well, and I know he's pretty well-educated, pretty strategically savvy, pretty successful in just about everything - when they call ME a buffoon, I recognize that they are just mob mind lesser beings - less wise, less bold, less well-educated. Same thing with the harrumphing about manners. They try the courts, but eventually the courts rule our way (because Trump and we are intelligent, and the arguments we pick are actually true and legal - and ultimately mere politics doesn't win against them). They try the press. But we enjoy it when he rants at them, insults them, acts very "unpresidential". They want to suppress him with manners, but he grows in our esteem when he pisses all over these ass-clowns and CALLS THEM monkeys to their faces. When he does that, he does that for himself - because he has the POWER to do it and there is not one fucking thing those bottoms can do but TAKE IT and writhe - and he does it for US, because we vicariously enjoy these poffs and toffs - assmonkeys all - getting insulted and tweaked and overborned - and discovering that they don't REALLY have any POWER at all. Power is the ability to spend money, direct federal men to build things, ignore Congress, direct investigations, put people in jail and pardon them, and do what you please OVER the screaming opposition of the powerless, who have to submit to you (because the police will beat them if they don't).
We enjoy the drama.
Syria. It's a Russian province, and was always going to be. Fine. They need their naval base - same reason the Crimea was going to be Russian once the shit hit the fan. Do not the strategic masterminds on the other side understand these things? Well, WE do.
We don't care if the Russians have bases here and there. WE do. The Russians have been useful allies at times - 1942-1945, in space, in dealing with terrorists, in Somalia, in other places. They're not "The Enemy". Fools like John Bolton and the bought-and-paid-for Senators of the defense lobby, who NEED a cold war with Russia to keep up their excesssive profits - yeah, THEY think it's a disaster that Russia is understood and allowed to keep its basis unmolested. But that's just it. WE are in power now. John Bolton and his ilk are not. They were publicly fired, defeated, Trump pulled the troops, Trump is working with Russia, well, just as promised, and he defeated the Mueller probe and the intelligence agencies that actually presumed to try to put THEIR idea of national security over OURS. But WE control the Presidency, and spooks serve the President, not themselves. they are too arrogant to get that, so they are being broken, and they know it. But Trump and we are too strong to stop.
That's what we see, and it is go.
Oh, and what do WE get out of it? Syria is now de facto at peace with Israel. No more rockets, no more attacks, ever. Do you think Putin is going to let those little pissant Muslims mess up his naval base and foothold deal with the USA? NOT A CHANCE. Russia can be bargained with, and keeps deals. Syria and the insane dirka-dirka jihad crew? No.
THAT'S why Russia. Same thing is coming with Iran. Russia is Iran's "Protector". That's fine, because Russia is not une belle poire to anybody. Putin protects Iran, and there is no more terrorism or aggression out of Iran. Iran becomes a quiet cooperative (puppet) ally of Russia.
Good. That means that if WE get along with Russia, where it counts, Syria and Iran CEASE TO BE PROBLEMS.
Cuba has already ceased to be a problem. And Venezuela. We give Putin his Syria and his Iran, and he's not going to bother us when we depose the incompetent thug half-running Venezuela.
L'il Kim in North Korea - he'll make a deal. Erdogan, barked at, will obey.
Mexico fell in line. China is falling in line.
Our guy is winning, and he's doing it by understanding the other side and actually giving them important, if subtle things.
That's why Trump, and that's why WE are looking for.
The Democrats will impeach him. The Republicans won't remove him. We will re-elect him, and Trump will rule exactly as before. But there will be revenge. And it will be oh so sweet.
