anonymous Senate holds

So apparently our Senate rules are so fucking stupid that a single Senator can anonymously table legislation to keep it off the agenda, effectively stalling the legislation indefinitely. A billion dollars in aid to Haiti has been held since soon after the devastating earthquake. The anonymous Senator responsible? Coburn. Senator Coburn has single-handedly prevented the US from fulfilling its pledge to Haiti.

Obviously Coburn is a total scumbag, but what kind of system allows this to happen? Why the bloody hell do our Senate rules allow it? Between Senate holds and a filibuster that is so ripe for abuse it has made 60 votes the de facto requirement to pass anything in the Senate, our system is badly broken. The Senate is a joke. It's the place where legislation goes to die.

They actually think it's trickling down

A new study shows that in a randomly selected survey of 5,522 Americans, we think that the wealthiest 20% of Americans own 59% of the wealth. The actual amount owned is 84%. It gets better:

"The respondents were presented with unlabeled pie charts representing the wealth distributions of the U.S., where the richest 20 percent controlled about 84 percent of wealth, and Sweden, where the top 20 percent only controlled 36 percent of wealth. Without knowing which country they were picking, 92 percent of respondents said they'd rather live in a country with Sweden's wealth distribution."

Yes, here in America many of us actually think the wealth is trickling down. I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or repeatedly facepalm.

Fact: Income taxes have decreased

Since Obama took office, 98% of Americans have received a cut in their federal taxes. That's a fact. Fully one-third of the economic recovery act (the stimulus package) consists of tax cuts.

Yet despite these completely objective facts, 1/3rd of Americans think their federal taxes have increased, 50% think they have stayed the same, and eight percent,yes, 8, think that taxes have gone down. EIGHT.

The objective reality is that for 98% of Americans, their federal taxes have decreased. EIGHT PERCENT think they've gotten a tax cut that 98% have actually gotten. Unbe-fucking-lievable. Talk about an astonishingly effective campaign of disinformation by the right wing.