Abandon hope, all ye who enter here:
Not like the brazen giant intellectual men of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs wisdom astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A(n) mighty woman ignorant American with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning will scorch all reason, and her name
Mother of Morons Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome STOOPID; her mild blank eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame Birthers, Tenthers,
Paultards, Militias, and a veritable mob of simpleton Patriots.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp soshulizm!” cries she
With spittle spritzing lips. “Give me your tired gullible, your poor obtuse,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free fail basic mathematics,
The wretched shortsighted refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless dumb, tempest-tossed imbecilic to me,
I lift my lamp corndog beside the golden door!”
Bonus: we have Sarah Palin. Also.
Here’s the thing: 98 percent of Americans — all but the top 2 percent of earners in the nation — have received a tax cut as a result of the actions taken by his evil Kenyan holiness, Presidente Adolf Huzzien Obama. Despite the fact that nearly all of us will see as much as a 10 percent increase in our federal tax refunds, a February poll found that just 12 percent of Americans think they’re paying less in taxes. Today, a full 34 percent think that they’re paying more. The rest think the Usurper-In-Chief has increased or kept taxes the same.
VERDICT: More than three quarters of Americans are wildly misinformed and/or staggeringly stupid.
And that’s just the general populace. For X-TRA Strength Stoopid (with Tartar Control), consider a recent survey of self-identified ‘Tea Party’ adherents: 64 percent think their taxes have increased. Foghorn Leghorn would be shocked, I say, shocked to learn that 63 percent of this same mutton-headed mob say they get the majority of their political and current events news from the boob-tube, specifically from {drumroll} the Fox News Channel.
Happy Tax Day, Dipshits.
Today, and in the coming days, slobbering hordes of Taxed Enough Already patriots will commence a great gnashing of dentures, and as a calvary of angry old white people rev the electric motors of their Hoverounds at protests all across the country, the low flying reality seems to be zipping unnoticed just above their heads:
“The American people need to be reminded that 98 percent of Americans got a tax cut last year,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday.
Reid was referring to the impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the stimulus — essentially, the only Obama policy to really impact people’s 2009 tax returns. In fact, tax refunds reached an all-time high this year in part because of the stimulus, the president said in his weekly address on Saturday. Meanwhile, taxes are at their lowest levels in 60 years, according to William Gale, co-director of the Tax Policy Center and director of the Retirement Security Project at the Brookings Institution.
“The relation between what is said in the tax debate and what is true about tax policy is often quite tenuous,” Gale told Hotsheet. “The rise of the Tea Party at at time when taxes are literally at their lowest in decades is really hard to understand.”
The scientific question raised by all this is: What the fuck?
Is this stupendous lack of understanding the result of poor messaging from Democrats and/or the Obama Administration? Well, sure. That’s probably some of it, but let’s face it. If a typical American can’t look at their paystubs and/or refund checks and discern the difference between LESS and MORE, messaging is going to be a bit of an uphill climb. Seriously, we’ve seen all this opposition to healthcare, based on ‘death panel’ lies and bogus claims of ‘creeping socialism’. Or Communism. Or Fascism. Or Heliotropism. Those are all the same thing right?
I suppose it’s possible that all this polling fails to capture fears about imagined future taxes, though I don’t place much stock in the deductive reasoning or precognitive abilities of folks who watch/listen to the likes of this guy:
At least some people, like a group calling themselves The Other 95% get it.
“Obama passed 25 separate tax cuts,” Sheryl Stein, founding member of “The Other 95%” said in a statement announcing the group’s plans, “including $300 billion in middle class tax cuts — one of the largest in history – as part of the stimulus package. Unlike President Bush’s 2001 tax cuts, which went to the wealthiest 2.2%, President Obama’s tax cuts overwhelmingly benefit working and middle class families — in fact, 95% of all Americans.”
Earth to Tea Party…come in Tea Party: Obama isn’t destroying the country, your television set is, and it’s doing it with your help.
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