"They are one of our largest taxpayers, but that doesn't mean they are entitled to special treatment. Hopefully, they will understand it is a two-way street."

“France’s Socialist government reacted with fury to its credit rating being downgraded yet again because of high taxes, unemployment and public spending.

Standard & Poor (S&P) poured humiliation on President Francois Hollande and his ministers on Friday by cutting its AA+ to AA.

The move comes almost two years after the country lost its top-rated AAA status.

S&P said it was applying another cut because Socialist reforms showed no prospects of leading to economic growth.”

“[Kennedy obsession] now lives on mostly as a sort of repetition-compulsion disorder through which the baby boom generation,…seeks to preserve its stultifying cultural hegemony even as it slowly—finally!—begins to exit the stage of American life on a fleet of taxpayer-funded Rascal Scooters.”

Here's the teachable moment for the Illinois State Historical Society: It's time to recognize that African American coal miners, enslaved and indentured, launched the Illinois coal industry -- including the so-called "first coal mine" in 1810 -- and when the state of Illinois ratified its constitution in 1818, a largely overlooked loophole allowed for legal slavery in the crucial tax-revenue-generating salt works, generated by coal mines, in the out-of-sight Shawnee Forests of southern Illinois.

Oh my! Peter Beinart describes what Republicans winning, via Ted Cruz, might look like:

The Washington GOP’s plummeting approval ratings may well boost the presidential prospects of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, just as the Gingrich Congress paved the way for the comparatively moderate George W. Bush. Like Bush, Christie is described as moderate because he has Democratic allies in his home state and because his rhetoric is not as harsh on cultural issues. But in the White House, Bush’s economic policies were hardly moderate. To the contrary, from taxes to social security to regulation, he governed well to the right of Ronald Reagan. Christie likely would as well. As governor, after all, he’s vetoed a hike in the minimum wage, cut the earned income tax credit, vetoed a millionaires’ tax three times and adopted basically the same attitude towards public sector unions as Wisconsin’s Scott Walker.

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful,...