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Well, ask and ye shall receive, at least on one of them. Adding a small transactions tax to speculative financial transactions (0.25 percent is the figure most often suggested) could raise quite a bit of money, it turns out.
Is John Boehner just worried about his leadership position? Is he really putting his own re-election as Speaker of the House before all else?
The news that the Supreme Court will be taking up two important gay marriage cases was expected, but nonetheless created a burst of commentary. But I can't help but wonder if people are getting the cases slightly backwards. In short, I think the Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA) case is going to prove to be more important than the Proposition 8 case from California.
But the "tax the rich" policies so far being discussed (at least the ones that leak out to the public) are laughably timid and tame, when you really examine the big picture. So far, what is making Republicans howl is President Obama's plan to end the Bush tax cuts on the top two marginal income tax rates, which would raise them from 33 percent to 36 percent, and from 35 to 39.6 percent. Seen one way, that's impressive, since tax rates haven't gone up in such a fashion since President Clinton's first year in office. But seen another, it's not all that radical at all.
Where to begin? Let's see, Obama's job approval polling is not completely through the roof, but it certainly has scraped the ceiling. The Associated Press just released a new poll that has Obama at 57 percent approval, 41 percent disapproval -- a job approval level the president hasn't seen since Osama Bin Laden's death. Added to today's unemployment rate dropping to the lowest point since Obama has held office, and you've got to believe that the folks in the White House have plenty to celebrate this holiday season.
The job of pundit, every so often, lends itself to delusions of grandeur. It goes with the territory. Which is why my immediate thought, upon hearing of the abrupt resignation of the Tea Party's leader in the Senate, was: "Wow, I guess the column I posted yesterday on the inherent hypocrisies in the current Republican Party's positions just blew his mind."
While the entire political punditry world is caught up in yet another horserace -- this time around, the "who's up/who's down on the fiscal cliff talks" debate -- something astounding is happening within the ranks of the Republican Party. Because major tenets of the party's faith seem to be crumbling. The bedrock ideology of the party is revealing itself, in multiple ways, of having been built on sand all along. These are all rather polite ways of calling the Republicans enormous hypocrites, I realize. But when the shoe fits, the shoe fits, so I offer no apologies for doing so.
[Program Note: Instead of our regular article today, we are going to attempt to shamelessly beg for money from you. Just thought I'd warn everyone up front. And, as always, there will be kittens! This is a cheap and completely transparent attempt to fog your mind with saccharine cuteness in an attempt to make you send in some of your hard-earned cash before you wake up and realize what you've done. Kidding aside, though, we have big news to offer if this year's pledge drive is successful, so you'll want to read about that, below.]
All in all, a pretty triumphant month for the president, no matter how you look at it.