The GOP's Idea of 'Tax Fairness'

If anyone needs any more evidence that the Tea Party are a bunch of chumps, here you go; the Tea Party -- which many say stands for "Taxed Enough Already" -- supports a political party that openly argues for raising most of their taxes.

Talking Points Memo:

You can almost always count on Republican presidential candidates to be united in their opposition to more taxes for the rich. But this time around, the 2012 field is standing lockstep behind a less traditional idea: the middle class pays too little in taxes.

Thanks to a strange convergence of conservative ideological trends since President Obama’s election, Republicans now are expected to protest the entire bottom half of taxpayers’ contributions as too stingy even while they proclaim Americans are “Taxed Enough Already.” And they’ve yet to figure out a policy that will satisfy both complaints at once.

In recent months, nearly every major Republican candidate has name-checked a popular statistic that 47% of Americans who file taxes paid no income tax in 2009. Given the GOP’s anti-tax zeal you’d think they’d be celebrating. Nope!

Keep in mind, this is the same side of the aisle that argues that taxation is theft. So, by their own reasoning, they're now arguing that government needs to steal from more people than it already does.

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Given the Opportunity, the Right Can Offer No Defense for Politicizing 9/11

Conservatives own 9/11. No liberals died that day in that famously liberal city; no Muslims, no gays, no feminists, no environmentalists. The first responders who ran into those burning buildings, while everyone else ran for safety, had all burned their union cards. No union thugs died that day. Only rock-ribbed Republicans -- the only true Americans -- died on 9/11, because it's impossible for liberals to be heroes or patriots. Conservatives own 9/11.

Which explains why this post by New York liberal Paul Krugman was the worst thing ever:

What happened after 9/11 -- and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not -- was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits -- people who should have understood very well what was happening -- took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

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Yes, the Public Would Blame Republicans for a Default

In the debt ceiling debate, there are no political winners. That's one message you could take away from a new CBS News poll showing that, of all the players in the debt negotiations, a majority of Americans approve of none. On this issue, it's disapprovals across the board.

But another message you could take away would be that, of all the political losers in this fight, the Republicans are the biggest -- by a wide margin. From the polling report itself (pdf):

More Americans disapprove than approve of how President Barack Obama is handling the negotiations with members of Congress about raising the debt ceiling, but Democrats and Republicans in Congress fare even worse. 43% approve of how the President is handling the talks, and 48% disapprove. Approval drops to 31% for the Democrats in Congress. Just 21% approve of the Republicans’ handling of the negotiations, while 71% disapprove.

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