See how they run like pigs from a gun see how they fly . . .

Suppose you walk into the supermarket and are confronted with a sliding scale of discounts on all your purchases. If your income is below the threshold common to the vast majority of Americans, you get a 15 percent discount. If it is in the higher range enjoyed by the happier few, you get a 35 percent discount. Alternatively, suppose we had individualized currency. When you spend a dollar, you get 15 cents cash back, so your dollar is worth $1.15. But your rich uncle spends a dollar and gets back 35 cents, so his dollars are worth $1.35.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Republican economic policy. That flaming radical Barack Hussein Obama proposes to moderate this class warfare by reducing the higher discount to 28 percent.

I will explain.

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Reveling in the perversity of your enemies seems like clever political tactics, but does anybody remember "After Hitler, us"?

Anyone with a website on which a video starts automatically ought to be horsewhipped.

La Marshall Continua. I am happy to take credit for TPM being a "far-left blog." Not like that milquetoast Atrios.

Take a gander at this goose. Maybe some are outraged that Karl Rove compared Bush era political influence of DoJ to campaign manager Robert Kennedy becoming attorney-general. But Rotwang remembers that the saintly "Bobby" authorized FBI surveillance of Martin Luther King. (See also this.) And we won't even bring up the Joe McCarthy stuff. Oh wait . . . we did.

Since Jim Cramer is such a rah-rah conservative now, I hope the Republicans put him in charge of RNC finances so he can get in on the ground floor of the next company to go tits up. (Always wanted to use that Brit expression.)

Advances in microsurgery.

In your guts you know he's nuts. Forget Palin, Huckaby, Romney. Run Rush run!

Worthwhile Canadian Initiative. Since Canada's banks were sufficiently regulated to completely avoid the present debacle, I say let them buy up the U.S. banks. I for one am ready to welcome our new Canadian overlords.

A conspiracy so vast. The Right has misjudged the dimensions of the dilemma they face. The Democrats did not conspire to make Limbaugh their national symbol. No, they in fact engineered the election of a certifiable imbecile named George Bush who would accomplish the profound discredit of the G.O.P. For his sacrificial dive into the tank, Al Gore was compensated with a Nobel Prize and an Oscar.

Michael Steele . . . . oh what's the point. Too easy.

Because writing full posts is tedious.

I'd be willing to serve in the Obama Administration, but unfortunately I've paid all my taxes.

I would be delighted to offer my services to anyone striving to reduce their income to $249,999. It is not too complicated. Step one. Calculate your income. Step two. Subtract $249,999. Step three. Send me the difference. I will send you an invoice for consulting services. Your payment will be deductible as a Schedule C business expense, and you will be safe from Obamian Socialism. Cash only, no checks please. You're welcome!

How to kill a zombie: shoot it in the head. How to kill a zombie bank . . .

The most important new tradition of the Internets is Sockington on twitter.com.

If we are known by our enemies, Rush Limbaugh assures the political future of the Obama Administration.

Even I find Keith Olbermann overwrought. But Rachel Maddow is brilliant.

Should we start a pool on how long Michael Steele will be RNC head?

These three statements can all be true at the same time:

1. An annual income of $250,000 does not make you rich.
2. An annual income of $250,000 leaves you better off than most other families, by a long shot.
3. The Politico's Roger Simon is an idiot.

The 'splodin pie chart under the thumbnail below provides data on the incomes of tax filing units -- households in the common parlance -- for 2007. Source is the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. The data is here. It should be clear that $250K puts you well above most others -- above 96 frakkin' percent, to be more specific.

On Hardballs the other night, Simple Simon was wringing his hands over how "low" the $250K cut-off is. He imagines this to be a middle class income. But middle of what? Chevy Chase, Maryland?

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I feel obliged to address the mostly number-free comment thread to Dr. Baker's timely post.

The most recent report on Social Security says the gap between cash income (mainly payroll taxes) and scheduled benefits rises to as much as 1.44 percent of GDP from 2016 to 2080. It actually peaks in 2035 at 1.32%, goes down a bit, then heads up again. All these numbers are strictly cash, abstracted from Trust Fund accounts. The numbers are here (fourth column, under "OASI," which stands for Old Age Survivors Insurance, a.k.a. "Social Security").

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Transit is not stimulus. Sorry. If I was king, I'd spend about $200 billion for SUPERTRAINS. We could use high-speed rail lines in California, the Texas Triangle, Florida, the Midwest hub, and even Rep. John Mica's (R-FL) ginormous D.C. to Boston line. But I wouldn't call it stimulus, because it isn't.

The recession may last two years. That would make it the worst since World War II. It might last four years, which would be epochal. By contrast, optimistically a high-speed rail system takes two or three times as long to get from gleam in the eye to operational. If you want to maximize dollars' impact on the recession, that's too slow. Even a 'shovel-ready' project could take a decade. Twenty billion spent over ten years is not as good as $5 billion spent over two years, say for teachers' aides, hospital orderlies, Pell grants, pothole fillers, and broadband installers.

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In the beloved Rotwang Xmas/Yule tradition, a medley of thoughts in the holiday spirit, with a big musical finish . . .

All I want for Christmas is New York's Senate seat. And I don't mind telling you my father was a very distinguished person, though nobody ever heard of him. His main failure was to be the son of a man who declined to enter the bootlegging business. More's the pity, who knows where I might be today.

* * *

I would like the eulogy at my funeral to be delivered by a national socialist, as a commitment to dialog and a symbol of reconciliation. Because Nazis are part of America too.

* * *

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It's a good thing Alabama doesn't have its own monetary policy. Otherwise it might be tempted to devalue its currency to boost exports. But it can still subsidize domestic industry, not least of all its plants of foreign auto companies. Latest triumph is the $811 million greased path laid down for ThyssenKrupp. We trust the use of slave labor will not be permitted.

And it has a senator by the name of Richard Shelby to sabotage the competition. Shelby and other peckerwood princes block aid to U.S. auto companies, while they suck in dollars for pork and their state government does for foreign companies what Shelby won't let the Feds do for Detroit. My personal favorite project of Shelby's, who has a long career of pork-sucking, is the Federally-funded statue of Vulcan.

Harold Myerson is good on this today.

We hear that Senator Mitch McConnell and assorted grafters in both parties want U.S. autoworkers to reduce their salaries in line with other workers in the same industry. To extend this excellent idea, we could align the salaries of Members of Congress with those of members of the parliament of India, which as near as I can determine is 16,000 rupees, or about $330.95 -- hell, let's round it off to $331.00 -- annually. As Senator McConnell and other students of economic science are aware, this will forestall the inefficient oversupply of talented people to the U.S. Congress and halt the Indian legislative braindrain.

Jon Stewart has pointed out that MSNBC is the new Fox, and since the election, the left-of-center political universe has proven itself the equal of the Bushlovin', Dittohead, No-Spin Zone Right in the stupidity Olympics. First there was the frenzy to bat down the 'meme' of a center-right nation. Now there is the haste to disprove the notion of an "Angry Left."

Of course the idea of the Left is elastic. Left of Richard Nixon is not the same thing as left of George W. Bush. Harry Truman supported national health insurance, the same sort of scheme criticized in Obama campaign advertisements. Nixon supported a national, guaranteed annual income, while Bill Clinton ended welfare, crappy as it was, as a Federal entitlement. Where does center end, and left begin? Where does center-left end, and disreputable, crazy left begin?

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Bill Clinton's campaign genius, James Carville, was once a populist. He was quoted as saying "I do politics; I don't do government." Arcane matters of political economy he left to the best and the brightest -- folks like financial master of the universe Robert Rubin and Harvard (Harvard!) wunderkind Larry Summers. The best and the brightest. The very same people who can claim a liberal share of the blame for the collapse of the world economy and its leading financial institutions. Because they're so brilliant, didn't you know?

Now we have this nebbish, this shmendrik, one Steve Hildebrand, presuming to lecture the nation about public policy, a topic concerning which, as his post reveals, he ought to just shut his stupid face.

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I first saw Larry Summers do a seminar presentation for my graduate department. He looked like a Hassid, sporting a beard, dark suit and tie. When he turned around to write on the blackboard, we spied a single shirt tail hanging below his jacket, giving rise to a suppressed titter in the assembled. But nobody laughed at his presentation, nor when he corrected misconceptions volunteered by assorted senior professors. At the time he was about 30 years old. My other Larry story is about a speech he gave to the National Tax Association, an assemblage of tax lawyers, accountants, economists, and technocratic government types. He offered tribute to the group as only he can, noting that the first professional economics journal he ever followed was the National Tax Journal. He modestly reported that it was the only one he could understand, since he was still in high school.

Bob Reich provdes an upbeat roundup on the Obama economic team, but it's missing the main character, the aforementioned Larry.

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As loyal partisans of Spartakusbund, we have nothing in principle against government ownership of industry, nor against government subsidies to for-profit companies. Today's quandary: are the Big-3 auto companies for-profit companies?

I'm no auto aficionado. I've owned three cars in the past 20 years, so feel free to correct what follows. I know you will.

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In Washington D.C. it is said that personnel is policy. Personnel are being selected by the Obama Administration as we speak. Policy is being made, right now. It is not too early to discuss Obama's policies. I'm getting daily emails from the new model Obama Democrats, asking for more old-fashioned money. I'd like to see some changes at the top, rather than a cavalcade of Ye Olde Tyme Democratic Hacks.

If President O wants to keep the base fired up, he needs to elevate some new people. The incoming crowd we've seen thus far is going to wilt enthusiasm faster than Harry Reems contemplating Ann Coulter.

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The general confusion about just what socialism is and isn't seems pervasive. In the mouths of the dumb Right it has become a political cuss-word.

The ordinary meaning is when the Gov takes ownership of the "commanding heights" of industry. (Not my preference, by the way.) That's the definition children should be learning in the schools. Obviously that is not the Obama program. To the contrary, one of his missions will be to unwind the Bushists' embrace of the financial system, where just who is f**king whom is an abrasive topic of debate.

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