Douche-bag(s) of the week

What with all the health care sturm und drang (if Tyler can use interrobang, I can use that phrase!?), I am not wanting for ample targets to chose from. However these two individuals went above and beyond, even putting these fellows to shame.

Mocking an 11 year old child whose mother had died. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck thought that simple because this child thought that maybe, if his mother had been able to afford insurance she might not have died. And for that thought this is the sort of response this child gets:

Limbaugh:
"Now this is unseemly, exploitative, an 11-year-old boy being forced to tell his story all over just to benefit the Democrat Party and Barack Obama …And, I would say this to Marcelas Owens : 'Well, your mom would still have died, because Obamacare doesn't kick in until 2014.'"

Beck:
"That's the George Soros-funded Obama-approved group fighting for health care…Since all of the groups are so concerned and involved now, may I ask where were you when Marcelas' mother was vomiting blood?"

And if you and your ilk weren't allowed to spew your venom, perhaps the Clinton plan would have passed and this young boy would still have is mother.

So for attacking an 11-year old you get to be the Douche bag of the week!

On a separate but equally infuriating issue. The Tea Party, comes up from time to time in my posts. Well David Frum (no progressive by any stretch of the definition) had some interns do a survey of the tea partyers while they were in D.C this past week. The results were interesting to say the least.

In general, suffice to say, they do not know what the fuck they are talking about. That may have been a bit crude, so I will let Bruce Bartlett take it from here (also not know for his liberal policy views, as he was a serious Reagan economic adviser).

The first question that was asked concerned the size of government. Tea Partyers were asked how much the federal government gets in taxes as a percentage of the gross domestic product. According to Congressional Budget Office data, acceptable answers would be 6.4%, which is the percentage for federal income taxes; 12.7%, which would be for both income taxes and Social Security payroll taxes; or 14.8%, which would represent all federal taxes as a share of GDP in 2009.

Not everyone follows these numbers closely, and Tea Partyers may have been thinking of figures from a few years ago, before the recession when taxes were higher. According to the CBO, the highest figure for all federal taxes since 1970 came in the year 2000, when they reached 20.6% of GDP. As we know, after that George W. Bush and Republicans in Congress cut federal taxes; they fell to 18.5% of GDP in 2007, before the recession hit, and 17.5% in 2008.

Tuesday's Tea Party crowd, however, thought that federal taxes were almost three times as high as they actually are. The average response was 42% of GDP and the median 40%. The highest figure recorded in all of American history was half those figures: 20.9% at the peak of World War II in 1944.

To follow up, Tea Partyers were asked how much they think a typical family making $50,000 per year pays in federal income taxes. The average response was $12,710, the median $10,000. In percentage terms this means a tax burden of between 20% and 25% of income.

[...]According to calculations by the Joint Committee on Taxation, a congressional committee, tax filers with adjusted gross incomes between $40,000 and $50,000 have an average federal income tax burden of just 1.7%. Those with adjusted gross incomes between $50,000 and $75,000 have an average burden of 4.2%.

It is one thing to engage in a debate, but I personally think you should at least know what it is you are talking about before you engage....

-Cheers