Just curious: who is hosting tonight? Is Dr. Maddow back?

I have to take Rachel to task today. I know she is passionate anti-death-penalty. Sometimes she goes on these long tirades about it where she says "the state kills" about 10 times in 2 minutes.

I'm a life-long liberal but call it killing or whatever you will, these guys like Holmes need to be tried and executed.

I can make a stronger case for a fetus being human than him.

There are cases of excessively violent criminals going on to attack and injure or kill other inmates or guards. They throw feces-urine bombs on guards from cell openings. They refuse to leave their cell and a posse of 8 guards have to come in hockey uniforms to remove them. Over and over and over.

Shoot them.

These small business people who think Romney is going to help them are wrong. Romney has no intention of helping any small business, unless you are these big corporations or extremely wealthy. Any small business people listen to Romney would be outright fools to listen to Romney’s lies and deceptions. Romney will be the biggest nightmare you have ever seen, if he gets into the White House. If you think Bush, Chenney, and their cronies were bad in craving power, corrupt, greedy, arrogant, hypocrites, and deceiving, Romney by far is even worse and it will impact America and the world in the worst ways possible. A premonition told what these Republicans, extremists of hatred, and extreme wealthy were, but Romney is by far worse yet. When they say Romney has no ethics or moral’s that is just putting it lightly that man is a walking nightmare with a smile on his face enjoying all the misery, despair, and death he puts on others.

Where's Rachel? Will she be on the show tonight? If not, why not?

Okay, when will Rachel be back on? We all miss her.

Thank you to Ezra Klein for helping to clarify what is meant when people talk about "raising taxes on the poor." This, of course, refers to the near-poor, those who still have somewhat steady jobs. As much as we all try to ignore it, an entire chunk of our population doesn't earn enough to owe taxes, and often don't qualify for such things as the EITC. I don't think the general population is even aware of how far we've come in creating a Third World country in our midst. We don't discuss the significant increase in those who are subject to minimum wage waivers in recent decades.

huh, I came to check out what the Maddow Show had to say about the passing of Sally Ride. Apparently nothing. Geek cred revoked.

I thought Mr Klien was a smart guy- contrary to what he said- LIBOR has nothing to do with most consumers- mortgage rates are not based on LIBOR- particularly the LIBOR rate that is at issue- which was in part the one day over night rate- LIBOR is no different in many respect to the "prime" - it is just a rate equal to what ever the bank says it is- Mr. Klien complains that the voter ID laws is a solution looking for a problem- which likely it is- however LIBOR is a "gate" with no scandal

In the 50's and 60's, is was the government that "overruled" the citizens in the south who supported segregation. The Dems lost the south because of it.

Now, it will have to be the citizens in Republican run states that will have to support the right to vote for all its citizens.

Let's dip our finger in blue ink, a la Iraq, and support the Constitution.

My Darling Rachel,

Here's a comment I sent to my good econ guru Ezra Klein. He is fantabulously bright and gives me great hope that his commentary, will indeed, stir not only national political debate about where America needs to be in the not too distant future, but where we need to be now, in our resolvable economic dilemmas.

Ezra, wait, there's something you forgot. Solutions all start here:

It's ok. Everyone, or nearly everyone, forgets that all the money denoted in dollars was and will be, legally, created from thin air. And the government does this and backs it with its "Good Faith and Credit"...no gold, silver, or seashells. As a matter of fact there would be no dollars if the Government didn't create and issue them first. This was the end result of 1913, and solidified in 1971 when Nixon abandoned the gold standard and fixed exchange rates.

So let's see how this works. The Gov creates the first dollar, and then some cynically subversive, greedy group of plutocrats tells us we must be taxed to fund the government. In truth we are taxed to manage inflation.

So the government takes back 33 cents of that dollar to keep us from spending to much.
But, we're told the 33 cents pays for most of the stuff authorized by Congress. And if there's not enough tax revenue, we're told government must borrow from the same private sector into which it just issued the one dollar bill.

So, let's say it borrows 17 cents. That makes 33 cents in taxes and 17 cents in borrowed revenue. So now government has taken 50 cents out of the private sector to pay all of its bills. Leaving us with 50 cents in our private sector pockets.

What's wrong with this picture?

Well, with core inflation only at 2% and unemployment, real unemployment at 22% (shadowstats.com) seems to me the Gov ought to just issue an additional 50 cents from thin air just like it did with the first dollar. That way more folks could work and more money would stay in our pockets.

Seems Government could issues dollars to put people to work since the tax cut laden private sector has failed us. Government could do this until everyone, willing and able to work is working.
What create a Weimar like hyperinflation by just printing money??

Well not exactly.

The Weimar had to deal with reparation payments and stuff like foreign exchange shortages. We don't have and will not likely have that problem since the U.S. can always pay any bill denominated in dollars. Moreover we have lots of folks who are not working, underemployed, or just given up looking for work. That means there are fewer folks to buy stuff. You need lots of folks spending, and shortages to get the inflation meter to rise.

However, if inflation does raise its ugly head at some point the government should reduce consumption by taxing us so that we don't have too many dollars chasing too few goods; the government can take some of its money back to keep prices from rising.

But, a general, permanent tax to fund federal government expenditures is a scam. The sole issuer of its own currency does not need revenue to spend.

Eureka! That's it! Gov can tax us just to make sure we don't have price inflation at full employment. Preventing us from spending too much…That's the only reason to tax us.

(Except for the hidden reasons, like distorting income distribution and commercial markets here and abroad.)

OMG!!! We've been scammed all these years, at least since we came off the gold standard when Gov needed to tax to raise revenue. You mean its been since 1971 that the 1% have been running this tax scam? Yep, and we're the stupid ones who never took the time to figure out back then what we just now figured out.

They knew that the Federal government didn't need tax revenue per se to spend and their effective tax rates dropped from 75% in 1971 to 17% today.

Well kiss my A@@

Generally enjoyed the tax information, but I was shocked to hear Klein say he didn't see the middle-class sharing in the sacrifice. Over the last 30 years, it's been our children as fodder for the wars, our wages eroded, our houses devalued, our 401K's emasculated or emptied when our jobs were outsourced etc. - each financial policy has been like attaching a new leech to our arses. We've been bled dry - doesn't that count as sacrifice or should we start donating organs?