Do people not living in cities or communities with electric train systems that use a third rail understand what it is?

Can someone, like Hawk, tell me why social security is *ever* an issue, and not the trillions of new debt Bush II has created??

PS -- fuck you, Hawk, you greedy, self-centered, arrogant, warmongering, white prick.

LMAO!

Even though I consider myself part of the Brad DeLong deficit hawk wing of the Democratic Party, abusing the Soc. Sec. Trust Fund to fix the General Fund fiasco is a non-starter for me. As soon as the governor made this Soc. Sec. proposal, I crossed his name off my list of candidates I could support. So yea - he made a wise decision to quickly drop out as he lost the center of our party and thoroughly ticked off the left. Now if he wishes to run as a Republican, maybe there's room for him there.

SP,

Yes, people who don't live in such communities are always mystified by the phrase and ask why stairwells have three rails when people have only two hands.

Atrios, who predicted this yesterday, is God. All bloggers should worship at his feet in the temple of Eschaton.

Poorly informed, delusional people like American Hawk have no problem with squandering trillions of our tax dollars and saddling our children and grandchildren with trillions more to buy weapons of death, then turn around and squawk about spending a dime to help the poor, disabled or elderly. Worse yet, these hypocrites show up in church on Sunday and pretend to be Christians when they are nothing of the sort.

Whether it's true or not that Vilsack's statements on Social Security during the last Democratic debate hurt him to the point that he decided to drop out, I'm fine with encouraging the impression that they did. I don't want to see any Democratic candidate going wobbly on Social Security, ever.

Poorly informed, delusional people like American Hawk have no problem with squandering trillions of our tax dollars and saddling our children and grandchildren with trillions more to buy weapons of death, then turn around and squawk about spending a dime to help the poor, disabled or elderly. Worse yet, these hypocrites show up in church on Sunday and pretend to be Christians when they are nothing of the sort.

Hawk -- why don't we just go back to how things were under Clinton. You remember that -- the Democrat who took a record deficit and turned it into a record deficit, before you scumbags bankrupted the country.

Good. Politicians should keep their grubby hands off of Social Security.

What makes you think I'm white?

Okay, we'll give you that one. The rest is implicit in your postings, though.

but 'll ask this first: What makes you think I'm white?
Posted by: American Hawk

scummy sense of entitlement and exceptionalism. a history of exceptionalism for american military attacks, and minimization of western atrocities.

however, you being a foreigner, I'll allow that if you aren't white, you certainly wish to be. ... like someone who's been colonized and grew up wishing that THEY were the ones who could step all over the mud people in the empire.

Wow. Make a proposal to re-index Social Security to prices instead of wages one day, withdraw your candidacy the next day.

Yeah, because before Vilsack made that statement, he had a strong candidacy that was expected to do well. Certainly, his SS statement did nothing to rescue his campaign, but blaming it for the demise of his campaign is rather exaggerated.

"You don't know anything about me except for some pseudonymous posts on the internet"

We know you are a troll who posts idiotic comments solely to get a rise out of people. Given this, nothing else matters.

Perhaps, cmdicely, but it certainly didn't help him. He had to have known that he had stuck his foot in it, particularly when he read the reaction. In any case, the stated reason for leaving, money, is likely the stronger one.

I'm with pgl. When I heard Vilsack's SS comments, I scratched him off my list of potential recipients of my vote.

And I live in New Hampshire.

,we can stop giving free healthcare to illegal immigrants

Sure, let's have them and their kids just die in the street.

we can reduce EITC tax fraud

It's not a fraud, dope. Both Democrats and Republicans recognize it as one of the best programs to help the working poor get out of poverty.

and we can create tax incentives for those who generate employment.

They already have an incentive, it's called generating profit from your business.

Why do you want to use tax dollars to give even more money to rich businessmen but not the working poor? Jerk.

cmdicely on February 23, 2007 at 12:27 PM:

Yeah, because before Vilsack made that statement, he had a strong candidacy that was expected to do well.

Dammit, who is this Vilsack guy people keep mentioning?

Hawk is right on,The top 20% should pay SS on all there wages just like the rest of us.Why should they get special treatment.

SP: Do people not living in cities or communities with electric train systems that use a third rail understand what it is?

Another fine example of left-coast liberalism. Yes, I do know New York City has electronic railroads. But where I'm from, we don't use the word "third rail." The boys ain't gonna know heads-from-tails unless you start callin it like it is, "the political donkey's back hoof."

Over a year ago Jon Stewart proclaimed that the last thing the Democrats needed was a guy with "sack" in his name, and from that moment on, he was nothing more than a punchline in our household.

Are there any Democrats willing to step up and actually propose a serious solution to the Social Security problem?

Sure. Honor the Social Security Trust Fund for starters, like Ronald Reagan promised it would be back in 1983. If you're not for that, you're the one who's not being serious.

Because I make more sense when I speak ad hominem, Kevin Drum.

Freq. Ken, there is no "Social Security problem", not in the real world at least. Social Security is fine, even if we do nothing until 2040 and then we might have to slightly raise the SS tax. But if we lift the $90K cap on SS taxes we won't have to do a damn thing at all.

The smug tone of the trolls that post on here reminds me of a study done a while back that showed that Rush Limbaugh's listeners regarded themselves, as a group, as "more well-informed" than the average person, and in fact the study showed they were actually far less-informed than nearly everybody.
Don't any of them have any humility whatever?

Dr. Morpheus >"...But if we lift the $90K cap on SS taxes we won't have to do a damn thing at all."

Oh come on now, tell the truth

We would have to do something, hmmmm, about 2307 or so

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." - H. L. Mencken

What makes you think I'm white?
Cuz no African-American in their right mind would say the stupid things you say. [OK, I'll admit that the "in their right mind" part does leave the door slightly open.]

Frequency Kenneth,

You said:

Are there any Democrats willing to step up and actually propose a serious solution to the Social Security problem?

Republicans are highly destructive to the Social Security System (See Part D of Medicare and how it was passed) and should not be allowed to have any say in how it works. Nor can Democrats craft a reasonable plan and get it passed and implemented while there is a Republican administration.

Republicans are toxic to good government. It really is that simple.

If you want to know more about Tom Vilsack, try Wikipedia.

And for anyone who wants to know why conservatives act and speak the way they do, Bob Altemeyer is writing a book called "The Authoritarians." It is being published online, and the first six chapters are up at The Authoritarians.

Glenn Greenwald strongly recommended it after reading the first three chapeters, and now that I have gotten through chapter 5, I can only say that Glenn understated how good it is.

Bob provides the questions of the Right Wing Authoritarian scale and the Social Dominance scale, then shows how the followers are High RWA's while the leaders are high Social Dominance people. He explains why the particular issues resonate with each, and point out that the high RWA's tend to be looking for leaders who agree with their beliefs, while high Social Domanance people are looking for followers and will lie, cheat and steal to find them. The High RWA's also have fragmented and compartmented thinking, so that they can firmly believe very contradictory things. High Social Dominance people can easily fake whatever is needed to get power (such as the appearance of religiosity.)

Bob also includes a lot of other studies to explain how many of the biases work. For instance, the High RWA's are extremely bigoted agains homosexuals, while the Social Dominators are not, but can fake it if they need to. [So in Congress, they might know Mark Foley was Gay, but who cares? It doesn't effect their particular flock of High RWA followers for some other Congressman to be Gay. That only drives voting.]

The book is filled with insights into the right-wing and conservative Republicans. Al and Hawk are laid out psychically corpses on the CSI autopsy table. {Grin}

There is no social security crisis. Moving to price indexing to set the intial benefit upon retirement would not fix the program, it gradually would end it as a meaningful retirement savings and insurance program. Problems with social security can be solved with minor adjustments. 'Tinkering' as one expert put it.

http://www.ceda.berkeley.edu/peoplenew/rlee.html

Politicians who say ignorant things about social security should drop out of races. Actually Vilsack dropped out because, long before he made this dumb comment, he could garner neither support or money.

This is bad, misleading post.

Perhaps, cmdicely, but it certainly didn't help him. He had to have known that he had stuck his foot in it, particularly when he read the reaction.

Oh, I agree; I just think the statement is more a result of his campaign's absence of life (a desperate way of seeking to attract support from the rightward fringe of the party or business groups) rather than the cause of its demise.

Agreed with CMD.

Vilsack's comments were a Hail Mary pass that got intercepted.

I ran for the Washington state legislature last year in King County, the home county of Seattle.
Out of 500 precincts, Republicans carried two. Not unsurprisingly, I lost.

I used the opportunity, however, to tell everyone that I would means test social security in a heartbeat. I turn 60 next month and I'm damned if I can think why I really need social security, except to pay for a cruise every year. This July it's going to be Athens and the Greek Islands, but that's on my dime still. Soon there will be more cruising and we will go twice a year. I worked pretty darn steady these last 40 years so the F.I.C.A. checks will be at the top of the scale. So will the wife's.

All I've really ever had in life are government jobs and a few promotions. Still, I'm a thrifty sort. I could probably even live on social security if I really had to, but these darn cruises are so nice. We visited Rome three times and Carthage once in this new century, plus a lot of other places. Pretty good for a dumb Montana Vietnam vet who downed two six-packs a day for decades before my nerves settled down.

I know people 30 years old who have managed to get on S.S.I. Not a hell of a lot wrong with them that meets the eye, but if social security can carry them without busting it can carry me!

Kevin,

You still need a better class of troll.

American Hawk - you are whiter than Donny Osmond. No one who isn't white could spout the kind of nonsense you do, unless it's D'Nesh D'Souza or Armstrong Williams -- and they wish they were white.

Frequency Kenneth - there is no immediate problem with Social Security and its more than likely there won't ever be. If normal growth rates continue and the population increases as it has been through immigration, the program will remain fully solvent without the need for any modifications. There is certainly no need to touch the program now especially given that incompetents and ideologues hostile to the program control the White House.

Mike Cook - how nice that you don't need Social Security. Most people do -- it's the difference between a comfortable retirement and a life of penury. It will be even more important in the future now that businesses are abandoning traditional pensions (which I bet you got as a government employee) to the cheers of Republicans everywhere. If you means test Social Security you will turn it into a welfare program. Then you and the American Hawks of the world can attack it as a handout to the undeserving.

Too many dumb asses to contemplate.