He didn’t spend time with these people to gain insight, you don’t have to spend twenty years with someone to gain insight, about twenty minutes with either of these guys is enough. Would you be so forgiving if Obama’s friends had burned crosses on the front yards of black folks a couple decades ago? To answer your question, no one in this group inspires me.

No problem. That one didn’t sound right from the beginning. Anyone who has actually studied the two men and watched them in a detached and objective manner would know that simply doesn’t describe Bush, now it may have then but not now. From what I understand he is very organized, thoughtful and intelligent. Reagan also would not have said something like that, at least not in a document that was destined for history. He simply wasn’t a man to belittle people, he was tough and would give you a piece of his mind, but it simply wasn’t in his upbringing to make someone small. Reagan had also played the political game all his life, from being president of the Screen Actors Guild to the presidency. It would have been in a moment of weakness for him to have burnt a bridge like that with a statement that had no significance. Let alone write it down in a historical document.

That link didn’t work was it supposed to or was that a joke?

An underestimated enemy will defeat you everytime.

On the other hand, Snopes doesn’t record this as false:

http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=bush+eats+poo&sp-a=00062d45-sp00000000&sp-advanced=1&sp-p=all&sp-w-control=1&sp-w=alike&sp-date-range=-1&sp-x=any&sp-c=100&sp-m=1&sp-s=0

At least it gives every slacker dumbass kind out there the hope that, hey, obviously you dont have to work hard or be intelligent to be president.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/kinsley.asp

Problem is, that has been the modus operandi of the republicans since Rove moved in, and it is brutally effective in its stifling of informed debate.

NL - here’s a tidbit about Bush from Ronald Reagon’s diary:

an actual quote that Reagan wrote about George “W” in his diary, recently edited by author Doug Brinkley and published by Harper Collins

“A moment I’ve been dreading. George brought his n’er-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida ; the one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job. Maybe I’ll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they’ll hire him as a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work.”
From the REAGAN DIARIES——entry dated May 17, 1986.

The argument here is over what constitutes equal opportunity. When much of the population has their flat tax cutting into their budget for education or health care while a small group only has taxes cutting into their amount of disposable wealth then I would say no. Notice that I don’t advocate redistributing all disposable wealth — that would be insane. I say only that a relatively small amount of disposable wealth from those at the top of the economic ladder would offset the taxes of millions who can’t afford true equal opportunity.

The reason for my rather rude remark is that every time I get in a discussion with Mat you, being the consummate follower, pop in about this time and tell Matt what excellent points he has made and Enky submits one of his misspelled diatribes, and Matt goes away and I don’t get to finish the discussion with him. I was pleasantly surprised that you at least made a point worth making in your last paragraph.

You have graciously illustrated one of the main points of this discussion. We all want equality, conservatives want equal opportunity, liberals want equal outcomes. I haven’t read much about Warren Buffett’s early years but I have read “A pirate looks at 50” which is pretty much an autobiography of Jimmy and it seems Jimmy’s dad was certainly comfortable but not rich so I don’t think the boys came from money to give Warren a head start. As long as the tax shelters are available to the housekeeper we have equality, if she isn’t smart enough, or hard working enough, or lucky enough she may not be as successful, that can’t be helped, well it can by forcibly taking from one pocket to the other, and then we have equal outcome. I don’t know what is erroneous about that, it is just two different ways of looking at the world, one will ultimately lead to something resembling America, the other something resembling the Soviet Union. Usually it will stagnate somewhere about France. Take your choice

shcb strategy at that point is to abruptly change the subject (whoops, this discussion started with corp. taxes so getting back to that now boys…) then throow out some incindiary comments about me and Enk - likely hoping that more posts from us will help to bury his defeat at the hands of the ever affable ymatt.

shcb - nice point about buffet’s investment income tax rate being the same as his housekeepers, however I even find that hard to believe. I’d bet buffet has plenty of tax shelters and tricks unavailable to the houseekeeper so that his investment tax rate is actually significantly lower than his housekeepers investment tax rate… doesn’t really matter as you say cuz the housekeeper can probably only dream of having any investments of substance, barring lotteries or a major re-calibration of the social contract in America.

but certainly the greater their income, the greater the benefits that they personally enjoy from our government’s use of tax dollars.

I’m not so sure about that, that is one of those statements that one side will use percentages and the other will use real dollars. I would make the argument that the poor “need” government more than the rich or even the middle class, but that is a statement that would make an interesting debate but would probably be left unresolved.

Warren has gotten more and more of a populist in his later years, don’t know why. The reason Jimmy’s uncle can make a cavalier remark like that is that his income comes from investments, not actual work. Investment money is taxed at a lower rate because that money has been taxed already in the vast majority of cases. This is why Buffett’s tax rate is lower that his housekeeper’s income tax, the rate of his housekeeper’s tax on investments is the same as her boss’s, provided she has investments.

I so heavily prefaced my 100% tax remarks so they wouldn’t be a straw man. (That remark is for the peanut gallery, Knarly and Enky are at their keyboards as we speak trying to figure how to use “straw man” in a sentence)

I don’t believe it’s the wrong direction to see that there’s a growing economic gap that doesn’t have anything to do with a gap between people’s willingness to work more or less hard. I’m also not saying that those who earn millions don’t deserve it, but certainly the greater their income, the greater the benefits that they personally enjoy from our government’s use of tax dollars. For that reason, it is only fair that they bear a (much) greater burden of the taxation, especially since the actual income generated from those at the lower end of the bracket is so relatively insignificant by comparison. Why not ease the burden on those for whom taxation cuts into standard of living while moderately increasing it for those who will still fully enjoy the benefits of their wealth and who are so much closer to the effects of national policy? As Warren Buffett pointed out, he currently pays a lesser percentage of his income to taxes than does his housekeeper.

As for your 100% taxation example, that’s really just a straw man. I don’t support such a thing, Obama doesn’t, and I doubt anybody here does.

Back to Obama, what I don’t like about his proposal is it admittedly will make 10 million more people non tax payers, that is just entirely the wrong direction we want to go, we want more people taking ownership in this country, not less, even if it’s only a token amount.

Our current tax policy is very far from either of these extremes. Those who earn more money still enjoy the benefits but those at the bottom of the economic ladder are not being taxed to hunger (many are not taxed at all). The argument is only one of degrees.

What kind of a dirtbag would characterize that as punishment?