Dear Everyone -

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Dear Republicans

The 17 people who stood on the stage were the 'best' you had?  You didn't have much.

Are Republicans just getting less competent, less qualified, less able to 'be'?  Are Republicans so caught up in the myriad of victimization schemes they have lost sight of the prize - the history and future of the United States of America.  They were a grand party, one with ideas, and men who stood for values and an identity - who were proud of America and were willing to fight til the end to save her from the wrong path.

You have been so long divorced from the people - the immigrants, and working class - you have bought in to the 2nd class status Republicans have held for so long that you believe capitulating to Democrats helps your chances of ... I'm not sure what, but you must believe something.  Each time Republicans hold a branch - Congress or White House, when it turns over, you work nicely to allow a smooth transition.  You don't ram bills through, you invite Democrats to the office and discuss a transition.  Why?  Collegiality?

When Democrats lose control of a branch of government they ram bills through, exclude Republicans from meetings or discussions until the new government takes office.  This has happened each and every time the switch has occurred since at least 1996.  Why do you still insist on following a path that hurts America each time.  They push bills through, hold committee hearings and don't allow Republicans input, even when the national/state votes are for the Republicans.  They play the legalistic game, you play collegiality.  Why?  Are you retarded.  There actions do not benefit America so why do you allow it.  They don't.  What are you afraid of - being called abrasive or pushy ... they already call you that and every nasty name possible.  Where is your spine.  Where is your willingness to do what is best for America and Americans.  In your socks.

Instead the party of ideas gave us 17 people - none of whom would be a very good president.

The Presidency is not just a job.  It is not just an office.  It is not just a position within a building called the White House.  It is the single most important position on planet earth.  From the creation of said position by George Washington, and the manner he carried himself, the respect that was developed within and for the position of President of the United States ... decades and centuries of work by men who treated the position with respect and reverence (yes, I am aware some did not) - centuries of work by men who built the respect up ... to be torn down by either of the two people we are faced with choosing from ... is disgraceful.

You created Trump.  Had someone of stature and respect run, he would not.  Your bumbling useless idiots are what brought him into the game.  You did it.  You and the Democratic party put us in the horrible position we now find ourselves.  Shame on all of you.

Now that he is the President, if you fail to support him, you will destroy the Republican party and doom your chances of ever governing again for 50 years.  It is your choice, but if you choose wrong, America loses.  The world loses.

Signed,
Very unhappy camper

Imperial Presidency or Not?

Shift on executive power lets Obama bypass rivals By Charlie Savage WASHINGTON — 4/23/12, MSN.com One Saturday last fall, President Obama interrupted a White House strategy meeting to raise an issue not on the agenda. He declared, aides recalled, that the administration needed to more aggressively use executive power to govern in the face of Congressional obstructionism.  “We had been attempting to highlight the inability of Congress to do anything,” recalled William M. Daley, who was the White House chief of staff at the time. “The president expressed frustration, saying we have got to scour everything and push the envelope in finding things we can do on our own.” For Mr. Obama, that meeting was a turning point. As a senator and presidential candidate, he had criticized George W. Bush for flouting the role of Congress. And during his first two years in the White House, when Democrats controlled Congress, Mr. Obama largely worked through the legislative process to achieve his domestic policy goals. [When the Congress was all Republican under Bush, he did not flout the role of Congress, he did not bypass Congress.  Only when the Democrats took control of Congress did he feel forced to bypass Congress.  That's when Obama opened his big mouth and started to shriek.  Back in 1994 when the Republicans took over Congress, they worked with Bill Clinton.  They passed more legislation during those years than when the Democrats had control.  Yet Obama shrieked about the flouting of Congress, the separation of powers ... and now, he does it everyday, violates those powers delegated to Congress and not given to the Executive, and he does it with a smile.] But increasingly in recent months, the administration has been seeking ways to act without Congress. Branding its unilateral efforts “We Can’t Wait,” a slogan that aides said Mr. Obama coined at that strategy meeting, the White House has rolled out dozens of new policies — on creating jobs for veterans, preventing drug shortages, raising fuel economy standards, curbing domestic violence and more. Each time, Mr. Obama has emphasized the fact that he is bypassing lawmakers. When he announced a cut in refinancing fees for federally insured mortgages last month, for example, he said: “If Congress refuses to act, I’ve said that I’ll continue to do everything in my power to act without them.” Aides say many more such moves are coming. Not just a short-term shift in governing style and a re-election strategy, Mr. Obama’s increasingly assertive use of executive action could foreshadow pitched battles over the separation of powers in his second term, should he win and Republicans consolidate their power in Congress. Many conservatives have denounced Mr. Obama’s new approach. But William G. Howell, a University of Chicago political science professor and author of “Power Without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action,” said Mr. Obama’s use of executive power to advance domestic policies that could not pass Congress was not new historically. Still, he said, because of Mr. Obama’s past as a critic of executive unilateralism, his transformation is remarkable. “What is surprising is that he is coming around to responding to the incentives that are built into the institution of the presidency,” Mr. Howell said. “Even someone who has studied the Constitution and holds it in high regard — he, too, is going to exercise these unilateral powers because his long-term legacy and his standing in the polls crucially depend upon action.” Mr. Obama has issued signing statements claiming a right to bypass a handful of constraints — rejecting as unconstitutional Congress’s attempt to prevent him from having White House “czars” on certain issues, for example. But for the most part, Mr. Obama’s increased unilateralism in domestic policy has relied on a different form of executive power than the sort that had led to heated debates during his predecessor’s administration: Mr. Bush’s frequent assertion of a right to override statutes on matters like surveillance and torture. “Obama’s not saying he has the right to defy a Congressional statute,” said Richard H. Pildes, a New York University law professor. “But if the legislative path is blocked and he otherwise has the legal authority to issue an executive order on an issue, they are clearly much more willing to do that now than two years ago.” The Obama administration started down this path soon after Republicans took over the House of Representatives last year. In February 2011, Mr. Obama directed the Justice Department to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages, against constitutional challenges. Previously, the administration had urged lawmakers to repeal it, but had defended their right to enact it. In the following months, the administration increased efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions through environmental regulations, gave states waivers from federal mandates if they agreed to education overhauls, and refocused deportation policy in a way that in effect granted relief to some illegal immigrants brought to the country as children. Each step substituted for a faltered legislative proposal. But those moves were isolated and cut against the administration’s broader political messaging strategy at the time: that Mr. Obama was trying to reach across the aisle to get things done. It was only after the summer, when negotiations over a deficit reduction deal broke down and House Republicans nearly failed to raise the nation’s borrowing limit, that Mr. Obama fully shifted course. First, he proposed a jobs package and gave speeches urging lawmakers to “pass this bill” — knowing they would not. A few weeks later, at the policy and campaign strategy meeting in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, the president told aides that highlighting Congressional gridlock was not enough. “He wanted to continue down the path of being bold with Congress and flexing our muscle a little bit, and showing a contrast to the American people of a Congress that was completely stuck,” said Nancy-Ann DeParle, a deputy chief of staff assigned to lead the effort to come up with ideas. Ms. DeParle met twice a week with members of the domestic policy council to brainstorm. She met with cabinet secretaries in the fall, and again in February with their chiefs of staff. No one opposed doing more; the challenge was coming up with workable ideas, aides said. The focus, said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, was “what we could do on our own to help the economy in areas Congress was failing to act,” so the list was not necessarily the highest priority actions, but instead steps that did not require legislation. Republican lawmakers watched warily. One of Mr. Obama’s first “We Can’t Wait” announcements was the moving up of plans to ease terms on student loans. After Republican complaints that the executive branch had no authority to change the timing, it appeared to back off. The sharpest legal criticism, however, came in January after Mr. Obama bypassed the Senate confirmation process to install four officials using his recess appointment powers, even though House Republicans had been forcing the Senate to hold “pro forma” sessions through its winter break to block such appointments. Mr. Obama declared the sessions a sham, saying the Senate was really in the midst of a lengthy recess. His appointments are facing a legal challenge, and some liberals and many conservatives have warned that he set a dangerous precedent. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate Democratic leader, who essentially invented the pro forma session tactic late in Mr. Bush’s presidency, has not objected, however. Senate aides said Mr. Reid had told the White House that he would not oppose such appointments based on a memorandum from his counsel, Serena Hoy. She concluded that the longer the tactic went unchallenged, the harder it would be for any president to make recess appointments — a significant shift in the historic balance of power between the branches. The White House counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, said the Obama administration’s legal team had begun examining the issue in early 2011 — including an internal Bush administration memo criticizing the notion that such sessions could block a president’s recess powers — and “seriously considered” making some appointments during Congress’s August break. But Mr. Obama decided to move ahead in January 2012, including installing Richard Cordray to head the new consumer financial protection bureau, after Senate Republicans blocked a confirmation vote. “I refuse to take ‘no’ for an answer,” Mr. Obama declared, beneath a “We Can’t Wait” banner. “When Congress refuses to act and — as a result — hurts our economy and puts people at risk, I have an obligation as president to do what I can without them.” The unilateralist strategy carries political risks. Mr. Obama cannot blame the Republicans when he adopts policies that liberals oppose, like when he overruled the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to strengthen antismog rules or decided not to sign an order banning discrimination by federal contractors based on sexual orientation. The approach also exposes Mr. Obama to accusations that he is concentrating too much power in the White House. Earlier this year, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, delivered a series of floor speeches accusing Mr. Obama of acting “more and more like a king that the Constitution was designed to replace” and imploring colleagues of both parties to push back against his “power grabs.” But Democratic lawmakers have been largely quiet; many of them accuse Republicans of engaging in an unprecedented level of obstructionism and say that Mr. Obama has to do what he can to make the government work. The pattern adds to a bipartisan history in which lawmakers from presidents’ own parties have tended not to object to invocations of executive power. For their part, Republicans appear to have largely acquiesced. Mr. Grassley said in an interview that his colleagues were reluctant to block even more bills and nominations in response to Mr. Obama’s “chutzpah,” lest they play into his effort to portray them as making Congress dysfunctional. “Some of the most conservative people in our caucus would adamantly disagree with what Obama did on recess appointments, but they said it’s not a winner for us,” he said. Mr. Obama’s new approach puts him in the company of his recent predecessors. Mr. Bush, for example, failed to persuade Congress to pass a bill allowing religiously affiliated groups to receive taxpayer grants — and then issued an executive order making the change. President Bill Clinton increased White House involvement in agency rule making, using regulations and executive orders to show that he was getting things done despite opposition from a Republican Congress on matters like land conservation, gun control, tobacco advertising and treaties. (He was assisted by a White House lawyer, Elena Kagan, who later won tenure at Harvard based on scholarship analyzing such efforts and who is now on the Supreme Court.) And both the Reagan and George Bush administrations increased their control over executive agencies to advance a deregulatory agenda, despite opposition from Democratic lawmakers, while also developing legal theories and tactics to increase executive power, like issuing signing statements more frequently. The bipartisan history of executive aggrandizement in recent decades complicates Republican criticism. In February, two conservative advocacy groups — Crossroads GPS and the American Action Network — sponsored a symposium to discuss what they called “the unprecedented expansion of executive power during the past three years.” It reached an awkward moment during a talk with a former attorney general, Edwin Meese III, and a former White House counsel, C. Boyden Gray. “It’s kind of ironic you have Boyden and me here because when we were with the executive branch, we were probably the principal proponents of executive power under President Reagan and then President George H. W. Bush,” Mr. Meese said, quickly adding that the presidential prerogatives they sought to protect, unlike Mr. Obama’s, were valid. But Jack L. Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during the George W. Bush administration, said the Obama administration’s pattern reflects how presidents usually behave, especially during divided government, and appears aggressive only in comparison to Mr. Obama’s having been “really skittish for the first two years” about executive power. “This is what presidents do,” Mr. Goldsmith said. “It’s taken Obama two years to get there, but this has happened throughout history. You can’t be in that office with all its enormous responsibilities — when things don’t happen, you get blamed for it — and not exercise all the powers that have accrued to it over time.” This story, "Shift on Executive Power Lets Obama Bypass Rivals," first appeared in The New York Times.

Obama and Democrats: Giving up on white working class!

November 27, 2011, 11:34 pm
The New York Times

The Future of the Obama Coalition

By THOMAS B. EDSALL

For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class.

All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists — and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.

It is instructive to trace the evolution of a political strategy based on securing this coalition in the writings and comments, over time, of such Democratic analysts as Stanley Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira. Both men were initially determined to win back the white working-class majority, but both currently advocate a revised Democratic alliance in which whites without college degrees are effectively replaced by well-educated socially liberal whites in alliance with the growing ranks of less affluent minority voters, especially Hispanics.

The 2012 approach treats white voters without college degrees as an unattainable cohort. The Democratic goal with these voters is to keep Republican winning margins to manageable levels, in the 12 to 15 percent range, as opposed to the 30-point margin of 2010 — a level at which even solid wins among minorities and other constituencies are not enough to produce Democratic victories.

“It’s certainly true that if you compare how things were in the early ’90s to the way they are now, there has been a significant shift in the role of the working class. You see it across all advanced industrial countries,” Teixeira, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said in an interview.

In the United States, Teixeira noted, “the Republican Party has become the party of the white working class,” while in Europe, many working-class voters who had been the core of Social Democratic parties have moved over to far right parties, especially those with anti-immigration platforms.

Teixeira, writing with John Halpin, argues in “The Path to 270: Demographics versus Economics in the 2012 Presidential Election,” that in order to be re-elected, President Obama must keep his losses among white college graduates to the 4-point margin of 2008 (47-51). Why? Otherwise he will not be able to survive a repetition of 2010, when white working-class voters supported Republican House candidates by a record-setting margin of 63-33.

Obama’s alternative path to victory, according to Teixeira and Halpin, would be to keep his losses among all white voters at the same level John Kerry did in 2004, when he lost them by 17 points, 58-41. This would be a step backwards for Obama, who lost among all whites in 2008 by only 12 points (55-43). Obama can afford to drop to Kerry’s white margins because, between 2008 and 2012, the pro-Democratic minority share of the electorate is expected to grow by two percentage points and the white share to decline by the same amount, reflecting the changing composition of the national electorate.

The following passage from “The Path to 270” illustrates the degree to which whites without college degrees are currently cast as irrevocably lost to the Republican Party. “Heading into 2012,” Teixeira and Halpin write, one of the primary strategic questions will be:

Will the president hold sufficient support among communities of color, educated whites, Millennials, single women, and seculars and avoid a catastrophic meltdown among white working-class voters?

For his part, Greenberg, a Democratic pollster and strategist and a key adviser to Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, wrote a memorandum earlier this month, together with James Carville, that makes no mention of the white working class. “Seizing the New Progressive Common Ground” describes instead a “new progressive coalition” made up of “young people, Hispanics, unmarried women, and affluent suburbanites.”

In an interview, Greenberg, speaking of white working class voters, said that in the period from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, “we battled to get them back. They were sizable in number and central to the base of the Democratic Party.” At the time, he added, “we didn’t know that we would never get them back, that they were alienated and dislodged.”

In his work exploring how to build a viable progressive coalition, Greenberg noted, he has become “much more interested in the affluent suburban voters than the former Reagan Democrats.” At the same time, however, he argues that Republican winning margins among white working-class voters are highly volatile and that Democrats have to push hard to minimize losses, which will not be easy. “Right now,” he cautioned, “I don’t see any signs they are moveable.”

Teixeira’s current analysis stands in sharp contrast to an article that he wrote with Joel Rogers, which appeared in the American Prospect in 1995. In “Who Deserted the Democrats in 1994?,” Teixeira and Rogers warned that between 1992 and 1994 support for Democratic House candidates had fallen by 20 points, from 57 to 37 percent among high-school-educated white men; by 15 points among white men with some college; and by 10 points among white women in both categories. A failure to reverse those numbers, Teixeira warned, would “doom Clinton’s re-election bid” in 1996.

Teixeira was by no means alone in his 1995 assessment; he was in agreement with orthodox Democratic thinking of the time. In a 1995 memo to President Clinton, Greenberg wrote that whites without college degrees were “the principal obstacle” to Clinton’s re-election and that they needed to be brought back into the fold.

In practice, or perhaps out of necessity, the Democratic Party in 2006 and 2008 chose the upscale white-downscale minority approach that proved highly successful twice, but failed miserably in 2010, and appears to have a 50-50 chance in 2012.

The outline of this strategy for 2012 was captured by Times reporters Jackie Calmes and Mark Landler a few months ago in an article tellingly titled, “Obama Charts a New Route to Re-election.” Calmes and Landler describe how Obama’s re-election campaign plans to deal with the decline in white working class support in Rust Belt states by concentrating on states with high percentages of college educated voters, including Colorado, Virginia and New Hampshire.

There are plenty of critics of the tactical idea of dispensing with low-income whites, both among elected officials and party strategists. But Cliff Zukin, a professor of political science at Rutgers, puts the situation plainly. “My sense is that if the Democrats stopped fishing there, it is because there are no fish.”

As a practical matter, the Obama campaign and, for the present, the Democratic Party, have laid to rest all consideration of reviving the coalition nurtured and cultivated by Franklin D. Roosevelt. The New Deal Coalition — which included unions, city machines, blue-collar workers, farmers, blacks, people on relief, and generally non-affluent progressive intellectuals — had the advantage of economic coherence. It received support across the board from voters of all races and religions in the bottom half of the income distribution, the very coherence the current Democratic coalition lacks.

A top priority of the less affluent wing of today’s left alliance is the strengthening of the safety net, including health care, food stamps, infant nutrition and unemployment compensation. These voters generally take the brunt of recessions and are most in need of government assistance to survive. According to recent data from the Department of Agriculture, 45.8 million people, nearly 15 percent of the population, depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to meet their needs for food.

The better-off wing, in contrast, puts at the top of its political agenda a cluster of rights related to self-expression, the environment, demilitarization, and, importantly, freedom from repressive norms — governing both sexual behavior and women’s role in society — that are promoted by the conservative movement.

While demographic trends suggest the continued growth of pro-Democratic constituencies and the continued decline of core Republican voters, particularly married white Christians, there is no guarantee that demography is destiny.

The political repercussions of gathering minority strength remain unknown. Calculations based on exit poll and Census data suggest that the Democratic Party will become “majority minority” shortly after 2020.

One outcome could be a stronger party of the left in national and local elections. An alternate outcome could be exacerbated intra-party conflict between whites, blacks and Hispanics — populations frequently marked by diverging material interests. Black versus brown struggles are already emerging in contests over the distribution of political power, especially during a current redistricting of city council, state legislative and congressional seats in cities like Los Angeles and Chicago.

Republican Party operatives are acutely sensitive to such tensions, hoping for opportunities to fracture the Democratic coalition, virtually assuring that neither party can safely rely on a secure path to victory over time.

stupid people

Could it be true? Those we believe are protecting us from the heartless Republicans are themselves selling us out?

Senate Moves To Allow Military To Intern Americans Without Trial

NDAA detention provision would turn America into a “battlefield”

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Monday, November 28, 2011

The Senate is set to vote on a bill today that would define the whole of the United States as a “battlefield” and allow the U.S. Military to arrest American citizens in their own back yard without charge or trial.

“The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself,” writes Chris Anders of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

Under the ‘worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial’ provision of S.1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which is set to be up for a vote on the Senate floor this week, the legislation will “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who supports the bill.

The bill was drafted in secret by Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), before being passed in a closed-door committee meeting without any kind of hearing. The language appears in sections 1031 and 1032 of the NDAA bill.

“I would also point out that these provisions raise serious questions as to who we are as a society and what our Constitution seeks to protect,” Colorado Senator Mark Udall said in a speech last week. One section of these provisions, section 1031, would be interpreted as allowing the military to capture and indefinitely detain American citizens on U.S. soil. Section 1031 essentially repeals the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 by authorizing the U.S. military to perform law enforcement functions on American soil. That alone should alarm my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, but there are other problems with these provisions that must be resolved.”

dems

Americans Pre-Revolutionary

Caddell is a Democrat.  Supported Clinton and before him, Carter.

Pollster: Americans Are “Pre-Revolutionary”

Just 17 per cent believe U.S. government has consent of the governed

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Monday, August 8, 2011

Amidst riots in central Europe that have now spread to London and a debt downgrade that threatens to plunge the United States into a double-dip recession, Americans’ lack of confidence in their leadership is so crippled that they are now “pre-revolutionary,” according to pollster Pat Caddell.

A new Rasmussen poll shows that just 17 per cent of Americans believe that the U.S. government has the consent of the governed, an all time low. This dovetails with a record low for Congress’ approval rating, which stands at a paltry 6 per cent, while 46 per cent of Americans think most members of Congress are corrupt, with just 29% believing otherwise.

“The number of voters who feel the government has the consent of the governed – a foundational principle, contained in the Declaration of Independence – is down from 23% in early May and has fallen to its lowest level measured yet,” according to Rasmussen.

The poll was conducted before Friday’s U.S. debt downgrade, indicating that the figures could be even more dire in the aftermath of what some analysts believe is a precursor to a new great depression.

The results of this survey indicate that Americans are now “pre-revolutionary” says pollster Pat Caddell, who described the outcome of the poll as “unprecedented”.

This conclusion follows Caddell’s observation last November that “a sea of anger is churning” amongst Americans who “want to take their country back” and that the nation stood on the brink of a “pre-revolutionary moment”.

obama

Obama: His Economy

Wait, we just went through a couple weeks of 'the sky is falling' and the Republicans 'are terrorists' or worse, and in one day, very nearly everything they okayed on Tuesday, was meaningless and they will need to raise the limit again, very soon!

U.S. eats up most of debt limit in one day

$239 billion spike uses up 60% of funding OK’d on Tuesday

By Stephen Dinan

The Washington Times
Wednesday, August 3, 2011

U.S. debt shot up $239 billion on Tuesday — the largest one-day bump in history — as the government flexed the new borrowing room it earned in this week's debt-limit increase deal.

The debt subject to the statutory limit shot way past the old cap of $14.294 trillion to hit $14.532 trillion on Tuesday, according to the latest the Treasury Department figures, which are released on the next business day.

That increase puts the government already remarkably close to the new debt limit of $14.694, which means one day's new borrowing ate up 60 percent of the $400 billion in space Congress granted the president this week.

Debt numbers go up and down regularly, depending on what the Treasury Department is redeeming or issuing on any day, but have been on a steep upward trend for the past decade as spending has ballooned and revenues have fluctuated.

For the past 2½ months, though, the number essentially was frozen as the government was poised to reach the borrowing limit set by law. The Treasury Department used extraordinary means to stall, but was about to run out of room on Tuesday.

With little time to spare, Congress and the White House managed to cobble together a deal to grant new borrowing authority: an initial increase of $400 billion, coupled with future increases.

The fight was so bruising that President Obama on Wednesday took his debt team out to celebrate by buying them hamburgers at Good Stuff Eatery, a well-known burger joint on Capitol Hill. The White House said it was a reward for their "nonstop" work over the past few months.

At a meeting of his Cabinet later in the day, the president said the debt increase gave the government some room to maneuver.

"We have now averted what could have been a disastrous blow to the economy. And we have identified on the front end over a trillion dollars in spending reductions that can be done sensibly and safely without affecting core programs," Mr. Obama said.

He also looked ahead to the committee the debt deal creates and charges with finding an additional $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction by the end of the year.

"It's going to be challenging work, and I'm encouraging Congress to take it with the utmost seriousness," Mr. Obama said.

The deal called for caps on future spending and granted the president the power to win an initial $400 billion debt increase, with another $500 billion coming later if Congress doesn't manage to block it. Yet another increase is contingent on the committee's recommendations.

Former GOP Sen. Alan Simpson, who co-chaired the deficit commission that Mr. Obama formed last year, called the spending limits in the bill "a baby step of the first order."

"Disappointing would be half a world. Until they get to the point where they can change the 'B' in billion to a 'T' in trillion, we are not going to get anywhere," he told Bloomberg Television.

The previous one-day record debt increase was $186 billion, set on June 30, 2009.

Government debt subject to the statutory limit is broken down into two categories: debt held by the public, and intragovernmental loans such as money borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund and used to cover other basic government expenses.

According to the latest figures, the debt held by the public stood on Tuesday at $9.908 trillion, and the intragovernmental debt was $4.673 trillion. A slight portion of that debt is excluded from the legal limit.

 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
debt

Biden: Republicans are Terrorists. Democrats: Republicans are a Satan Sandwich.

Many Democrats and almost all Liberals oppose war and want negotiation with terrorists, most especially the Taliban.  9/11 for many Liberals was payback for US 'imperialism' and when Bush said 'you are either with us or against us' - all Liberals and many Democrats (imagine the scene in the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers where one of the remaining humans in the town is uncovered by the aliens and they turn, point and open their mouths and the noise that follows ....) began emitting a noise that would seem to come from an animal close to death, in its last throes of pain as it squeals in agony.   How dare Bush question our patriotism.  How dare Republicans question our dedication and commitment to the United States.  So fierce were their screeching sounds that Republicans prefaced everything with - we don't question their love for the country or we don't question their patriotism ... and Republicans tempered their statements even though what Bush stated was very true - you either stand with the United States government and Western Civilization or you support those who want to kill you.  We don't have to always agree on how we will oppose them, but we do need to agree we oppose them.  Liberals can't even agree on that issue and so perverted the argument it is meaningless - except to place Republicans on the defense.

All of that means nothing if you are a Liberal because you can call anyone you want names and not feel the slightest bit guilty.  After all, whatever you call someone, it must be accurate and so calling them a name is fine.  Unlike Republicans who do it out of spite and hate.

Unlike Democrats.

Sources: Biden likens tea partiers to 'terrorists'

By: Jonathan Allen and John Bresnahan
Politico

August 1, 2011

Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having “acted like terrorists” in the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit, according to several sources in the room.

Biden was agreeing with a line of argument made by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) at a two-hour, closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting.

“We have negotiated with terrorists,” an angry Doyle said, according to sources in the room. “This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.”

Biden, driven by his Democratic allies’ misgivings about the debt-limit deal, responded: “They have acted like terrorists.”

Biden’s office initially declined to comment about what the vice president said inside the closed-door session, but after POLITICO published the remarks, spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said: “The word was used by several members of Congress. The vice president does not believe it’s an appropriate term in political discourse.”

Biden later denied he used that term in an interview with CBS.

“I did not use the terrorism word,” Biden told CBS Evening News anchor and managing editor Scott Pelley.

Earlier in the day, Biden told Senate Democrats that Republican leaders have “guns to their heads” in trying to negotiate deals.

The vice president’s hot rhetoric about tea party Republicans underscored the tense moment on Capitol Hill as four party leaders in both chambers work to round up the needed votes in an abbreviated time frame. The bill would raise the debt limit by as much as $2.4 trillion through the end of next year and reduce the deficit by an equal amount over the next decade.

Democrats had no shortage of colorful phrases in wake of the deal.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) called it a “Satan sandwich,” and Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) called seemed to enjoy the heat analogy, saying: “the Tea Partiers and the GOP have made their slash and burn lunacy clear, and while I do not love this compromise, my vote is a hose to stop the burning. The arsonists must be stopped.

The deal was consummated Sunday night, the text of the bill was posted in the wee hours of Monday morning, and the House was expected to vote first on it Monday afternoon or evening. But there are still plenty of concerns in both parties and in both chambers.

Liberal Democrats have had the most averse reaction to the plan, which ensures between $2.1 trillion and $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade without requiring any of it to come from tax increases.

Biden told Democratic lawmakers that the deal would take away the tea party’s “weapon of mass destruction” — the threat of a default on U.S. debt obligations.

“They have no compunction about blowing up the economy to get what they want,” Doyle told POLITICO after the meeting.





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
dems

The New York Times: Why Can't Republicans Just Accept We Won.

The New York Times in all its objectivity.  Republicans can't say yes.  They can't say yes to anything, or won't.  They are unable to say yes.

Except - why should they say yes to greater spending, higher taxes, greater government ... why not less spending, less government, and less taxes.  Why not.

Social Security payments will go out.  Soldiers will get paid.  Those are not realistic fears - but they are used by fearmongers who cater to your fear, not objective and fair analysis.

July 22, 2011

The New York Times

Editorial

The Party That Can’t Say Yes

For days, the White House has infuriated its Democratic allies in Congress by offering House Republicans more and more in exchange for a deal to raise the debt ceiling and prevent default. But it was never enough, and, on Friday evening, it became clear that it may never be enough. Speaker John Boehner again walked away from the “grand bargain” he had been negotiating with President Obama, leaving the country teetering on the brink of another economic collapse.

At the White House podium a few minutes later, the president radiated a righteous fury he rarely displays in public, finally placing the blame for this wholly unnecessary crisis squarely where it belongs: on Republicans who will do anything to upend his presidency and dismantle every social program they can find. “Can they say yes to anything?” he asked, noting the paradox of Republicans, who claim that financial responsibility and debt reduction are their biggest priorities, rejecting yet another deal that would have cut that debt by at least $3 trillion.

Mr. Obama, in fact, had already gone much too far in trying to make his deal palatable to House Republicans, offering to cut spending even further than the deficit plan proposed this week by the bipartisan “Gang of Six,” which includes some of the Senate’s most conservative members. The White House was willing to cut $1 trillion in domestic and defense spending and another $650 billion from Medicare, Medicaid and even Social Security.

Much of that savings would have come from raising the eligibility age for Medicare benefits and reducing the cost-of-living increases that elderly people depend on when receiving their health and pension benefits. It could have caused significant damage to some of the nation’s most vulnerable people.

The “bargain” would require that alongside these cuts, tax revenues would go up by $1.2 trillion, largely through a rewrite of the tax code to eliminate many deductions and loopholes. That’s substantially less in revenue than the $2 trillion in the “Gang of Six” plan. The problem is that while much of the cutting would start right away, most of the revenue increases would be put off, in part because a tax-code revision would take months, and in part to allow House Republicans to say they did not agree to any specific tax revenue increases.

Democratic lawmakers were rightly furious when they heard about these details this week, calling the plan wholly unbalanced. But, in the end, it was Mr. Boehner who torpedoed the talks. He said Friday evening that he and the president had come close to agreeing on $800 billion of the revenue increases (the equivalent of letting the upper-income Bush tax cuts expire as scheduled next year — not much of a heavy lift) but could not stomach another $400 billion the White House wanted to raise through ending tax loopholes and deductions.

So, on the eve of economic calamity, the Republicans killed an overly generous deal largely over a paltry $400 billion in deductions. Mr. Obama was willing to take considerable heat from his liberal critics over the deal, and the Republicans were not willing to do a thing to anger their Tea Party base. As the president forcefully said, there is no evidence that House Republicans are capable of making those tough decisions. If last-ditch talks beginning Saturday fail, they will have to take responsibility if the unimaginable — a government default — happens in 10 days and the checks stop going out.





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
liberals

July 4th, Fireworks, Parades, and Right-Wing Extremists

Harvard: July 4th Parades Are Right-Wing




By Paul Bedard
June 30, 2011
US News



Democratic political candidates can skip this weekend's July 4th parades. A new Harvard University study finds that July 4th parades energize only Republicans, turn kids into Republicans, and help to boost the GOP turnout of adults on Election Day.

"Fourth of July celebrations in the United States shape the nation's political landscape by forming beliefs and increasing participation, primarily in favor of the Republican Party," said the report from Harvard. [See political cartoons about the 2012 GOP field.]

"The political right has been more successful in appropriating American patriotism and its symbols during the 20th century. Survey evidence also confirms that Republicans consider themselves more patriotic than Democrats. According to this interpretation, there is a political congruence between the patriotism promoted on Fourth of July and the values associated with the Republican party. Fourth of July celebrations in Republican dominated counties may thus be more politically biased events that socialize children into Republicans," write Harvard Kennedy School Assistant Professor David Yanagizawa-Drott and Bocconi University Assistant Professor Andreas Madestam.

Their findings also suggest that Democrats gain nothing from July 4th parades, likely a shocking result for all the Democratic politicians who march in them.

"There is no evidence of an increased likelihood of identifying as a Democrat, indicating that Fourth of July shifts preferences to the right rather than increasing political polarization," the two wrote.

The three key findings of those attending July 4th celebrations:

•When done before the age of 18, it increases the likelihood of a youth identifying as a Republican by at least 2 percent.

•It raises the likelihood that parade watchers will vote for a Republican candidate by 4 percent.

•It boosts the likelihood a reveler will vote by about 1 percent and increases the chances they'll make a political contribution by 3 percent.

What's more, the impact isn't fleeting. "Surprisingly, the estimates show that the impact on political preferences is permanent, with no evidence of the effects depreciating as individuals become older,"said the Harvard report.

Finally, the report suggests that if people are looking for a super-patriotic July 4th, though should head to Republican towns. "Republican adults celebrate Fourth of July more intensively in the first place."


















crap

Lies my Reopresentative told me: Dems and Reps - we will cut the budget (is it meaningful for you yet)

Deficit for Fiscal 2007 Slides.

By topeditor
October 5, 2007, 6:32 PM ET.



It’s all in the surge – the revenue surge, that is.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated Friday that the U.S. federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2007, which ended Sunday, was about $161 billion, or 1.2% of gross domestic product. That’s down from the $248 billion shortfall recorded in fiscal 2006, which translated into 1.9% of GDP. The Treasury Department will report the official tally later this month.

Much of the improvement in the nation’s fiscal outlook in the last year has come from continued rapid growth in federal revenue. CBO estimates that 18.8% of GDP in fiscal 2007, up from 18.4% 2006 and 16.3% in 2004 and 18.4% in 2000. Outlays came to an estimated 20% of GDP, about equal to the average over the previous five years.

While annual federal spending grew 2.8% in fiscal 2007 over fiscal 2006, year to year, revenue grew 6.7%. Individual income-tax receipts are estimated to be 11.3% higher than last year, and corporate income tax receipts are estimated to be 5% higher. Revenue growth has cooled substantially from the 11.8% fiscal year-to-year increase from 2005 to 2006. Spending growth also slowed.

Federal expenditures were up in fiscal 2006 due to Gulf-coast hurricane recovery efforts. They were driven down in fiscal 2007 by legislation enacted in 2006 cutting student loan subsidies and auctioning off a portion of the broadcast spectrum, proceeds from which are recorded as negative expenditures not as revenues.

“While somewhat lower than estimates issued at the beginning of the year, the 2007 deficit announced today by the Congressional Budget Office is no cause for celebration,” said House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (D., S.C.)

CBO has estimated that if the U.S. maintains a military presence in Iraq and if Congress doesn’t allow the tax cuts enacted in President George W. Bush’s first term to expire, then recent improvements in the deficit will be reversed, pushing it up to to roughly $300 billion by 2012.



*****************************************


And as bad as that was, and we were told everyday by Democrats how bad it was ....


... it just got worse.



******************************************


U.S. sets $223B deficit record


Dwarfs Hill’s cutting goals




By Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times
11:46 a.m., Monday, March 7, 2011


The federal government posted its largest monthly deficit in history in February, a $223 billion shortfall that put a sharp point on the current fight on Capitol Hill about how deeply to cut this year's spending.

That one-month figure, which came in a preliminary report from the Congressional Budget Office, dwarfs even the most robust cuts being talked about on the Hill, and underscores just how much work lawmakers have to do to get the government's finances in balance again.

The Senate plans to vote Tuesday on competing proposals to cut spending, but Democrats have rejected GOP-backed cuts of more than $50 billion, and Republicans have ruled out Democrats' cuts of less than $10 billion, meaning neither plan will draw the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster and pass.

"We've all done the math and we all know how these votes will turn out: Neither proposal will pass, which means neither will reach the president's desk as written. We'll go back to square one and back to the negotiating table," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat.

The two sides are facing a March 18 deadline, which is when the current stopgap funding bill expires. Without a new spending agreement by then, the government would shut down.

The House two weeks ago passed a bill that would cut $57 billion more from 2010 spending levels, including major reductions in a number of domestic programs.

Over the weekend, a top Senate Democrat said his party can accept no more than $6 billion in domestic cuts, and pointed to the proposal his colleagues introduced Friday that trims from several areas.

But a new set of numbers from the CBO indicates that Senate Democrats' proposal actually totals only $4.7 billion when measured as reductions compared with the previous year's spending.

So far, budget negotiations have not produced much visible progress.

President Obama designated Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as his point man in the conversations, and Mr. Biden convened a meeting with congressional leaders last Thursday at the Capitol. But Mr. Biden is traveling in Europe this week on a long-planned trip to meet with foreign leaders

Was it a secret meeting?  Off the record, off the books, in quiet and dark places, or one that was actually transparent?


White House press secretary Jay Carney hinted that Mr. Biden could still participate by phone, but declined to say whether anyone else was taking the lead in the talks in his absence.

"I'm not going to specify, simply to say that a variety of staff members, senior staff members, have been in conversations with folks on the Hill about this," the spokesman said.

Republicans argue that Congress needs to tackle not only short-term spending, but long-term growth in the costs of Social Security and Medicare as well.

"Something must be done, and now is the time to do it. Republicans are ready and willing. Where is the president?" said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican. "Suddenly, at the moment when we can actually do something about all this, he's silent."

According to the CBO, the government has notched a $642 billion deficit for the first five months of fiscal 2011, which is slightly less than last year's pace. Income tax revenues are rising faster than spending, which accounts for the marginally improved picture.

But interest on the debt continues to grow, reaching $101 billion through the end of February — a 12.5 percent increase over 2010.

The nonpartisan CBO's February deficit number is preliminary. The Treasury Department will issue the final number later this week.

February is traditionally a bad month for federal finances. The previous two records were $220.9 billion, posted exactly a year ago, and $193.9 billion in February 2009.















 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
deficit

Dems object to GOP gov't transparency probe


Congressmen say Rep. Issa's inquiry will burden federal agencies



By TED BRIDIS
updated 2/2/2011 4:09:04 PM ET
MSNBC


WASHINGTON — Some Democrats in Congress objected Wednesday to early steps taken by the new Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to conduct a broad inquiry into President Barack Obama's promises to improve government transparency.

Reps. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, Gerald Connolly of Virginia and Peter Welch of Vermont complained in a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., that his investigation will burden federal agencies responsible for producing government records under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act requested by citizens, journalists, companies and others. Cummings is the senior Democrat on the House oversight committee.

Issa last week demanded details of every such request during the last five years, plus copies of all letters or e-mails between government workers and people with pending requests. He said the effort would make sure that "all federal agencies respond in a timely, substantive and non-discriminatory manner" to requests for records under the information law.

The five-year window would cover part of the Bush administration and the first years of Obama's presidency.

In their letter to Issa on Wednesday, the Democrats said the investigation would require government offices to turn over perhaps hundreds of thousands of documents. "Without a defined focus, your inquiry will place a significant burden on FOIA offices and divert limited staff from processing requests from the public," they wrote.

Issa's investigation into government transparency under Obama is among the earliest by Republicans since they won control of the House, and targets one of the first pledges Obama made after he moved into the White House.

The investigation was at least partly prompted by reports last year from The Associated Press that the Homeland Security Department had sidetracked hundreds of requests for federal records to top political advisers, who wanted information about those requesting the materials.

In some cases the release of documents considered politically sensitive was delayed, according to more than 1,000 pages of e-mails obtained by the AP.

The Democrats said they were uncomfortable with Issa's request for names of all people who sought federal records, dates of their requests, descriptions of what they asked to receive and whether they ever received anything. They said Issa should modify his request to not include names.

"It is unclear why the committee needs the identities of specific FOIA requesters," they wrote.

Names of people who ask the government for records and details about what they sought under the Freedom of Information Act are generally available publicly, and many are published by federal agencies online.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
dems

OBAMA and HIS Spending Habit

FACT CHECK: Obama and his imbalanced ledger



FACT CHECK: A tricky juggling act as Obama urges more spending and a freeze on spending


Calvin Woodward, Associated Press
Tuesday January 25, 2011, 10:24 pm EST



WASHINGTON (AP) -- The ledger did not appear to be adding up Tuesday night when President Barack Obama urged more spending on one hand and a spending freeze on the other.

Obama spoke ambitiously of putting money into roads, research, education, efficient cars, high-speed rail and other initiatives in his State of the Union speech. He pointed to the transportation and construction projects of the last two years and proposed "we redouble these efforts." He coupled this with a call to "freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years."

But Obama offered far more examples of where he would spend than where he would cut, and some of the areas he identified for savings are not certain to yield much if anything.

For example, he said he wants to eliminate "billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies." Yet he made a similar proposal last year that went nowhere. He sought $36.5 billion in tax increases on oil and gas companies over the next decade, but Congress largely ignored the request, even though Democrats were then in charge of both houses of Congress.

A look at some of Obama's statements Tuesday night and how they compare with the facts:

OBAMA: Tackling the deficit "means further reducing health care costs, including programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which are the single biggest contributor to our long-term deficit. Health insurance reform will slow these rising costs, which is part of why nonpartisan economists have said that repealing the health care law would add a quarter of a trillion dollars to our deficit."

THE FACTS: The idea that Obama's health care law saves money for the government is based on some arguable assumptions.

To be sure, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated the law will slightly reduce red ink over 10 years. But the office's analysis assumes that steep cuts in Medicare spending, as called for in the law, will actually take place. Others in the government have concluded it is unrealistic to expect such savings from Medicare.

In recent years, for example, Congress has repeatedly overridden a law that would save the treasury billions by cutting deeply into Medicare pay for doctors. Just last month, the government once again put off the scheduled cuts for another year, at a cost of $19 billion. That money is being taken out of the health care overhaul. Congress has shown itself sensitive to pressure from seniors and their doctors, and there's little reason to think that will change.


OBAMA: Vowed to veto any bills sent to him that include "earmarks," pet spending provisions pushed by individual lawmakers. "Both parties in Congress should know this: If a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it."

[Great, but where have you been for the last couple years.  Why promise to veto now?  Why didn't you then??]



THE FACTS: House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has promised that no bill with earmarks will be sent to Obama in the first place. Republicans have taken the lead in battling earmarks while Obama signed plenty of earmark-laden spending bills when Democrats controlled both houses.

It's a turnabout for the president; in early 2009, Obama sounded like an apologist for the practice: "Done right, earmarks have given legislators the opportunity to direct federal money to worthy projects that benefit people in their districts, and that's why I've opposed their outright elimination," he said then.




OBAMA: "I'm willing to look at other ideas to bring down costs, including one that Republicans suggested last year: medical malpractice reform to rein in frivolous lawsuits."

[So an idea Democrats have ignored and quite honesatly ignored - he is NOW ready to consider.  Why now, if it is good enough to look at now, wasn't it worth considering it two years ago?]

THE FACTS: Republicans may be forgiven if this offer makes them feel like Charlie Brown running up to kick the football, only to have it pulled away, again.

Obama has expressed openness before to this prominent Republican proposal, but it has not come to much. It was one of several GOP ideas that were dropped or diminished in the health care law after Obama endorsed them in a televised bipartisan meeting at the height of the debate.

Republicans want federal action to limit jury awards in medical malpractice cases; what Obama appears to be offering, by supporting state efforts, falls short of that. The president has said he agrees that fear of being sued leads to unnecessary tests and procedures that drive up health care costs. So far the administration has only wanted to pay for pilot programs and studies.

Trial lawyers, major political donors to Democratic candidates, are strongly opposed to caps on jury awards. But the administration has been reluctant to support other approaches, such as the creation of specialized courts where expert judges, not juries, would decide malpractice cases.



OBAMA: Praised the "important progress" made by the bipartisan fiscal commission he created last year.

[That commission decided nothing, achieved nothing, and considering the composition - was not as equally balanced as he suggests.  It is easy to agree to milk toast - we need to cut spending.  What braniac doesn't recognize that imperative - cut spending.  His touting the bipartisanship of this committee is like celebrating the fact your child just graduated from pre-school - and suggesting to anyone and everyone that one graduation (pre-school) indicates you child is well on his/her way to graduating from Harvard.]


THE FACTS: The panel's co-chairmen last month recommended a painful mix of spending cuts and tax increases, each of them unpopular with one constituency or another, including raising the Social Security retirement age, cutting future benefit increases, raising the gasoline tax and rolling back popular tax breaks like the mortgage interest deduction. But Obama has yet to sign on to any of the ideas, even though he promised when creating the panel that it would not be "one of those Washington gimmicks."

Obama missed another chance Tuesday night to embrace the tough medicine proposed by the commission for bringing down the deficit. For example, the president said he wanted to "strengthen Social Security for future generations" -- but ruled out slashing benefits or partially privatizing the program, and made no reference to raising the retirement age. That left listeners to guess how he plans to do anything to salvage the popular retirement program whose trust funds are expected to run out of money in 2037 without changes.


OBAMA: As testament to the fruits of his administration's diplomatic efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons, he said the Iranian government "faces tougher and tighter sanctions than ever before."

THE FACTS: That is true, and it reflects Obama's promise one year ago that Iran would face "growing consequences" if it failed to heed international demands to constrain its nuclear program. But what Obama didn't say was that U.S. diplomacy has failed to persuade Tehran to negotiate over U.N. demands that it take steps to prove it is not on the path toward a bomb. Preliminary talks with Iran earlier this month broke off after the Iranians demanded U.S. sanctions be lifted.


[And the AP story is not a right wing hatchet job.  I would NOT consider the AP right-wing, by any stretch.]




















obama admin