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"I'M MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!" There are certainly a multitude of similarities between Howard Beale and Glenn Beck

Given Fox News's intimate involvement, sponsorship, and mindshare at the tea party, I think a response from the Daily Show is only fitting. According to an NYT/CBS poll, 59% of Tea Party attendees have a favorable opinion of Glenn Beck, versus an 18% figure nationwide. In fact, of all questions asked to members of the tea party, Glenn Beck ended up being the single thing attendees agreed on most. I am actually somewhat surprised by Nate Silver's language in that article... This does not necessarily mean that the tea parties have become an offshoot of FOX News -- an allegation that liberals throw around a bit too loosely. But FOX, and particularly Beck's program, have become intimately intertwined with the movement. Indeed, once one begins to think of the tea parties through this paradigm, everything else starts to fit together. The tea-partiers skew older and college-educated: that's basically the cable news demographic. ...I would've chosen harsher rhetoric.

That's the same compiler Visual Studio uses and can certainly compile GUI apps. I thought you wanted to develop with command line utilities.

Good, then I expect they'd like to see the Controlled Substances Act overturned.

I think many see the Carter and Reagan years through rose colored glasses. I'm sure there are many people out protesting how huge the deficit is under Obama while remembering Ronald Reagan as a hero. In the age of 9/11, the Iran Contra affair seems almost tawdry.

I like it, although my immediate reaction is most politicians aren't that considerate in their votecasting, at least most of the time.

The free Express Edition includes the command line Microsoft C++ compiler utility (I believe it's "cl.exe")

In that case, where's the concern about the ongoing violations of the fourth amendment? (e.g. warrantless wiretapping) Seems there's just a lot of undue concern about the 2nd amendment, which isn't even being challenged. This Congress/Administration haven't done anything regarding gun control.

Surprising! The opening speech left me with the general feeling I get about the tea party: what exactly are they protesting? Regarding the gun rights activists, I am left to wonder why this guy feels his gun rights are threatened when the current government has done nothing of the sort. Should I be surprised no one is protesting against the government asking us to quarter soldiers?

How much of that is simply a reaction to the things these people are saying combined with the fact that they lack any sort of unifying set of concerns other than (Democrat-controlled) "government bad", "taxes bad", "spending bad" etc.? I'm also still waiting to see any video of any tea party attendee who anyone feels makes a cogent argument.

Humiliation? Is "the left" humiliating them any more than they're humiliating themselves? I also don't really see where this is mentioned in the article. Can't really say I thought that was a good article either... reacting to the tea party harms their right to free speech? Huh? Like a single quote by Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr.? *rimshot*

Unfortunately, at least on this side of the pond, children's books aren't exempt from politics:

NewLeftMedia's latest video of the tax day tea party: zbyFeFhUTmI Apparently Obama wants to ban fishing as part of his radical socialist agenda. The Tea Party wants to see income tax abolished. Global warming is bullshit. And illegal immigrants will cause a new form of cholera.

Obama promised us this... if they were to reverse these tax cuts, he'd be violating his campaign promises. Unfortunately, many members of the tea party think Obama has raised taxes when in fact Obama lowered taxes for 98.6% of Americans

I haven't really seen a thread specific to this yet, but I've been reading a lot of speculation about the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull which recently erupted and severely disrupted European air travel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_eruptions_of_Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull Specifically, I've read that Eyjafjallajökull sits next to a larger volcano named Katla, that has always erupted after Eyjafjallajökull erupted. If so, this could mean prolonged disruptions to European air travel. Oh yeah, by the way... here's a photo:

I just came here to post the SNL parody. Awesome. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedAnd these cracked me up:

The Laffer Curve argument is used to argue for something counterintuitive: decreasing tax rates will increase tax revenue. This doesn't make the opposite untrue. The idea that increasing tax rates increases tax revenue is intuitive, raise taxes and you'll get more money. The question is more how much can you raise taxes before your returns will diminish and companies/people will have less profit/income due to opportunities they couldn't pursue because of the increased taxes. I think from a historical perspective this question is difficult to answer. Clinton raised taxes at the start of his term, using a party-line vote, and largely because of that lost the Democrats a lot of seats in Congress. How big of an effect this tax increase had on the balanced budget is debatable. Sadly, I think what worked well for Clinton was having Republicans in control of Congress. The Republicans tried to spend money and Clinton vetoed it, so much that the Republicans tried to give him a line-item veto, and failed due to Constitutionality concerns. My take-away from that is if you want to decreased spending (or at the very least curtail increased spending) your best bet is probably to have one party in control of the executive branch and a different party in control of Congress. Except Clinton raised taxes in the middle of a recession. It worked for him! I'd like to have a smaller national debt. Short answer: Politics. The things this country spends the most money on are the proverbial political "third rails". I'd like to see a moratorium on social security. The program will be bankrupt before I ever see any benefits. I'm aware of this. I don't expect to see anything from it. I'm fairly certain most people my age don't expect to see anything from it. We should just codify that into law. Break apart the age groups and what their social security benefits will be and plan accordingly.

I'm certainly not against decreasing spending. I'm strongly in favor of decreases in spending. However, I don't think it's realistic that either party will be able to significantly decrease spending any time in the near future.

Well, I guess that's what's causing the confusion then, I'm talking about the present. The economy is starting to recover and the deficit is huge. I think raising taxes (particularly raising taxes on the super-rich) would help generate additional revenue and reduce the deficit. I see absolutely no reason to cut taxes right now, unless you want the deficit to continue to increase. And a point I really should touch on: When it comes to tax rates versus revenue, which seems to be the point at hand, the relationship from country-to-country is very much nonlinear: Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Affect the economy, or the budget? The President has the first and final say on the budget. Can you tell me exactly how I'm off topic here? The article you linked talks specifically about how using increased taxes to help balance the budget is a bad idea. I'm merely addressing those claims.

Rereading that, again, I hear the tired Laffer Curve supply-side trickle-down economics argument that by reducing the tax burden on various companies, they'll have more money to innovate and will therefore generate more taxable revenue. Sure, this guy doesn't mention the Laffer Curve by name. But the argument is the same. Reducing tax burdens on businesses will increase revenue. Three presidents have tried this. It failed. Miserably. The overwhelming majority of our national debt is owed to this philosophy. "Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it." "Partisan historical anecdote"? We've had three Presidents try this, and those three Presidents created the overwhelming majority of our national debt. How many more times do we have to try it before we realize it doesn't work? Do you think trickle down economics succeeded, or failed miserably? Reagan cut taxes. Tax revenue dropped. The debt went up. GHWB continued this policy, cutting taxes. Again, the debt went up. GWB tried cutting taxes. The debt went up. Clinton did the unthinkable... he *raised* taxes. Maybe there's some merit to that approach? If you'd like to start a thread on that paper specifically I'd be happy to discuss it. Newsflash: our budget isn't anywhere close to balanced.

I don't think it's ever been demonstrated that the relationship between tax rate and tax revenue is in any way linear. If the tax rate is 100% most people probably aren't going to work (unless the government creates some other kind of incentive). If the tax rate is 0% obviously there will be no revenue. Besides that? Show me.

In that case, the argument you're presenting does not address my own. I was suggesting that we keep taxes where they are if we wish to work on the problem of the deficit. The evidence you presented to the "contrary" was against tax increases. Furthermore that's talking about other "developed countries", versus what has been tried and historically proven to fail in our own country. Trying to combat the deficit while cutting taxes at the same time is silly. That's what the teabaggers want, but these two things work in direct opposition to each other.

Or to be more specific, the Republicans are successful at cutting taxes, however they have not been successful at cutting spending accordingly, but instead borrow money, then spend more! The result is our present national debt. I found this chart rather interesting, showing the distribution of tax rates among various brackets and how they evolved over time. Ever since Reagan, the rich have payed substantially less:

Yeah, the Laffer Curve argument... that approach worked so great for Reagan. I'm sorry, I just don't buy the argument that cutting taxes will increase tax revenue. We've been down that road with Reagan, GHWB, and GWB... the three presidents who created pretty much the entirety of our national debt.

If the deficit is the biggest concern, shouldn't we cut spending but keep taxes the same? If taxes are the biggest concern, why are they also complaining about the deficit? Decreased taxes will be harmful to any solution to the deficit. Decreased spending will help the deficit. Decreased spending doesn't give you an excuse to cut taxes. Revenue is nowhere close enough to cover costs. It'd be like someone who is deep in debt and decides to quit smoking cigarettes and drinking in order to lower their monthly expenses. After accomplishing this, despite being deep in debt, they decide "I guess I'll go from full time to part time at my job since I lowered my expenses". That still doesn't change the fact they're deep in debt.