Month: October 2013

Radical Weathermen

by digby

Blood pressure down, spirits up

by digby

Because it’s been a very long week you deserve to watch an adorable white lion cub for a couple of minutes:

And go ahead and have that adult beverage while you’re at it.  It’s going to be one of those week-ends too …

The Village

by digby

… where even breakfast is bought for you by the financial sector:

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Oh Ted

by digby

Seriously?

“The House of Representatives has repeatedly compromised already,” said Cruz, who already who spoke against funding the law on the Senate floor for 21 hours earlier this month. “The House began — it is the view of every Republican in this body, and indeed every Republican in the House, that Obamacare should be entirely and completely repealed. Nonetheless, the House started with a compromise of saying not repealing Obamacare but simply that it should be defunded.”

I can’t tell if this guy thinks he’s being very clever or if he’s just a well educated idiot at this point. But I’m reminded of this once again:

When baby elephants get upset they have tantrums

Keep in mind that Ted is a Senate newbie …

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QOTD: Dennis Ross (R-Pirate Party)

by David Atkins

Dennis Ross (R-FL-Pirate):

“We’ve lost the CR battle,” Ross, referring to the continuing resolution to authorize government spending, said in an interview. “We need to move on and take whatever we can find in the debt limit.”

“Take whatever we can find.” Are these people legislators or highwaymen?

Media like Bloomberg.com are presenting this quote as straightforward politics, a sign that even Tea Partiers are relenting on the shutdown as they look forward to the debt ceiling.

What they should be reporting on is the political dynamic on display. The Republicans took the government hostage, and Democrats didn’t back down. So the Republicans “lost” that “battle.” Now they’re taking the debt limit hostage and hoping that Democrats will pay the ransom on that, instead.

It must be said again: if Democrats were shutting down the government and threatening the full faith and credit of the United States in order to force a Republican president to pass gun control and tax increases, Republicans would be calling Democrats terrorists holding the nation hostage. They would be accusing the left of treason and threatening armed revolt and murder in the streets. The press would perforce take up some of that language in their reporting.

What Republicans are doing is truly radical. It threatens the very foundation of the government, using the language and negotiating calculus of pirates, hostage takers and terrorists. At some point the traditional press needs to call it what it is.

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Fickle Independents

by digby

Keeping in mind that most Americans have better things to do than follow the arcane business of government standoffs (and many think there’s a difference between the ACA and Obamacare…) it’s probably not a good idea to put too much stock in polls about all this. I would guess that most people retreat to familiar partisan corners. But this is sort of interesting, nonetheless:

The latest research from YouGov, conducted in the first two days of the shutdown, shows that half (50%) of Americans blame Republicans in Congress for the continuing shutdown. 11% blame Democrats in Congress while 29% blame President Obama for not ending the shutdown. This divides along partisan lines, with Democrats tending to blame Republicans and Republicans tending to blame the President or Democrats. Independents, however, are largely split, with 41% blaming Republicans in Congress and 33% blaming the President.

Andrew Sullivan says president Obama should be worried:

I’d find the narrow split among Independents unnerving, if I were the president. 33 percent blame the president for the shutdown and impasse? Given that he has already conceded sequester-level spending, and has cut the deficit in the last three years by the swiftest amount since the end of the Second World War, what else do they want him to do? If he were to abandon his signature domestic achievement after re-election, because of blackmail, we might as well give up on elections and representative government altogether.

Except, the fact is that Obama lost the independent vote in 2012 by 5 points. So, more of them are supporting him on this than voted for him.

But I do think the Democrats should probably curb their strutting around and stop declaring victory. I don’t know what these lunatics will do when they’re cornered, but it’s unlikely they’ll just start crying like little babies and quietly suck their thumbs. They tend toward the dramatic.

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Elizabeth the stalwart, shutdown edition

by digby

Here she is making the case yesterday the right way with the right words.

Funny, she doesn’t seem to think that even more austerity is a good way to go. How odd…

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Blast from the Past:John Boehner

by digby

Do you want to know why John Boehner keeps his job through all this nonsense year after year? Let him explain it to you:

“I got 98% of what I wanted”

It’s a good selling point. And considering that the final result of that was sequestration, he was right. When you look at the budget battles as one long running fight from 2011 on, you see that Democrats have achieved one thing: they allowed the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to expire, only two years late. I’d have to give the rest to the Republicans, although there are many Democrats strutting around taking credit for austerity in the midst of an epic economic downturn, so maybe they think they won too.

Update: This piece by Dave Weigel about the latest alleged GOP moderate rebellion in favor of a clean CR is very interesting. Seems they might not be on the up and up.  Imagine that. He also claims that they don’t believe the Democrats will provide enough votes for a clean CR, which I don’t understand.  Weigel says he’s writing that up later today so I’ll be interested to hear what he has to say.

In the meantime, don’t get too excited by the Democrats marching around patting themselves on the back for being the big winners.  They always do that. And a good part of the time they are wrong.  Best to just wait and see what happens and hope for the best.

Update II:  Speaking of blasts from the past, here’s another one, just for kicks:

Thursday, July 14, 2011

 
Yes, they really want to do this

by digby

I don’t think anyone considers Ezra Klein unconnected or hostile to the White House. So when he writes something like this, I assume they want it out there:

In my Bloomberg column today, I argue that the Obama administration is much more intent on reaching a deficit deal, and much less intent on making revenues a major part of it, than is commonly assumed. That’s led them to offer Republicans a deal that is not only much farther to the right than anyone had predicted, but also much farther to the right than most realize. In addition to the rise in the Medicare eligibility age and the cuts to Social Security and the minimal amount of revenues, it’d cut discretionary spending by $1.2 trillion, which is an absolutely massive attack on that category of spending.

This deal isn’t just a last-ditch effort to save the economy from the damage of a federal default. The White House would far prefer this deal to the McConnell plan, which would lift the debt ceiling without making any cuts at all. So why are administration officials so committed to striking a deal composed of policies they’ve mostly opposed? Here’s their thinking:

He goes on to say that they feel that if they can only get deficits “off the table” in a big way they will have the room to do other Big Things, that the only stimulus they can get is something small like extended unemployment insurance which is “better than nothing”, we should want to have the Democratic President timing the massive cuts in this deal rather than grumpy Republicans in 2012 appropriations, it’s good policy on the merits (really!) and finally, it will help Obama get re-elected, which is important because Mitt will make even deeper cuts.

To put all this slightly differently, White House officials believe a big deficit reduction deal would do them enough good, both politically and economically, that it’s worth making very significant compromises on the details of that deal. If you thought getting to $4 trillion in deficit reduction was a Republican goal, you’re wrong. It’s the White House’s goal, and the only reason it might not happen is Republicans won’t let them do it.

Just reminding everyone how we got here.

So Obamacare is worse than the final solution?

by digby

This is a column in the Washington Times today:

Christians need to engage in peaceful civil disobedience against President Obama’s signature health care law. The reason is simple and macabre: Obamacare enables U.S. taxpayer funds to pay for abortions for members of Congress and their staff. That’s right. Pro-life Christians will be forced to subsidize the slaughter of unborn children…

Devout Christians are obligated to oppose Obamacare — including those who champion social justice and universal health care. Christian teaching is crystal clear: The killing of innocent human life is wrong, a heinous transgression of one of God’s most sacred commandments. Abortion is murder; it is state-sanctioned infanticide. Obamacare is ensnaring Christians in its nefarious web, making them culpable in the killing of unborn babies. Their tax dollars will pay for the abortionist’s knife. Unwitting Christians will have the blood of innocent children on their hands.

This should come as no surprise. Progressivism is at war with traditional Christianity. Liberals seek to create a society without God. Their goal is personal liberation — the destruction of the family, Christian culture and all the other social bonds that act as bulwarks against radical individualism. Abortion clinics are liberalism’s Gulag Archipelago, death camps scattered across the landscape. For liberals, abortion is key to erecting a society without sexual consequences. If a pregnancy is unwanted, liquidate the baby. Secular progressives believe that nothing — including innocent human life — must stand in the way of the sexual revolution. It is genocide masquerading as “choice.”

Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide, more than 50 million unborn babies have been butchered. Hence, abortion has taken more lives than murderous dictators, such as Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin. Liberalism is responsible for more deaths than Nazism or Soviet communism…

Christians must wake up before it’s too late. There is a virulent prejudice still acceptable in America: Christophobia. For decades, liberal elites have sought to purge religion from the public square. Prayer has been banned from schools. The Ten Commandments have been taken down from courthouses. Same-sex “marriage” is becoming encoded in law, overturning marriage between a man and a woman as a sacred, unique institution. Pornography is rampant. The family is breaking down. Our culture is obsessed with sexual promiscuity and moral permissiveness. God and Christians are regularly mocked. Even in the military, Christians are now told to remain in the closet.

Enough is enough. America is a product of English and Christian civilization. Our Founding Fathers were Christian patriots, who understood that individual liberties stem from a higher power. The most important is the right to life. Christians must declare that their allegiance to their faith transcends that of the ideological, secular state. If Obamacare continues to insist that we subsidize abortion, then it’s time for Christians to march on the streets in peaceful opposition. Mr. Obama is not worth the loss of our souls.

Unfortunately, Obamacare doesn’t actually subsidize abortion. Which truly is a shame. If you’re going to be vilified as Hitler for doing it even though you didn’t, you might as well do the right thing. Too bad.

I wonder what Bart Stupak is doing these days? Oh right. He’s a lobbyist.

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Civic lesson for the 21st century

by digby