US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

anyway, i didn't find this very convincing:

http://www.tnr.com/article/not-even-past/91367/obama-presidency-roosevelt-economy-election-progressives

but this is:

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-07-05/opinion/frum.democrats.debt_1_debt-ceiling-spending-cuts-bush-tax-cuts?_s=PM:OPINION

The budget deals of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton in comparison.

Which brings me back to my starting question: Why don't the Democrats rebel? Presumably, they elected Obama to stand up for their shared principles. But he's not standing up. He's rolling over. Or being rolled.

The Frum piece and the budget comparison piece spell out the ugliness

http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/why-is-the-obama-team-embracing-hooverism/

what's the mystery? we live in an oligarchy

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/07/07/what-happens-on-august-3/

it’s far from clear that it’s even possible to stop making the 3 million payments that Treasury makes automatically every day. Doing so involves a massive computer-reprogramming effort which I’m sure could not be implemented overnight — and for political reasons nobody is going to get started on such an effort until after all hope is lost for a deal in Congress.

if that doesn't strike you as hilarious i don't think we share much of an outlook on life

I can't read anymore.

the united states desperately needs a better Master of Coin than the one we have now. maybe that littlefinger guy.

lol <3 mordy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmIZdXhAzTA

pretty sure he meant to say the "really rich" there

I dunno, it seemed like he meant the poor should pay their share, except for the really poor? Hard to decipher that mess.

For the next forty-eight hours I will react to the revival of this thread with the same dread with which I greet the U.S. Supreme Court one.

remember that the GOP was pushing the "lucky ducky" meme about a decade ago (and still believe in that shit). and the GOPers who are willing to entertain tax hikes define "really rioh" as folks like Warren Buffett (and not many people with lesser means than that). plus Orrin Hatch is a shithead whose word about anything isn't worth a helluva lot.

Hard to get by on just $50 million in personal assets these days.

have you seen the price of ivory backscratchers lately??

and don't get me started about the grey poupon

I've been meh on Greenwald lately but today's column made me shake.

When I first began writing about politics in late 2005, the standard liberal blogosphere critique -- one I naively believed back then -- was that Democrats were capitulating so continuously to the Bush agenda because they "lacked spine" and were inept political strategists: i.e., they found those policies so very offensive but were simply unwilling or unable to resist them. It became apparent to me that this was little more than a self-soothing conceit: Democrats continuously voted for Bush policies because they were either indifferent to their enactment or actively supported them, and were owned and controlled by the same factions as the GOP.

And:

I think Krugman's "personal" explanation -- that Obama is far more comfortable with "neo-liberal centrists" (i.e., corporatists) than with actual liberals -- is basically true (Frank Rich put it this way: "For all the lurid fantasies of the birthers, the dirty secret of Obama’s background is that the values of Harvard, not of Kenya or Indonesia or Bill Ayers, have most colored his governing style. He falls hard for the best and the brightest white guys"). But it's also about ideology, conviction, and self-interest: Obama both believes in the corporatist agenda he embraces and assesses it to be in his political interest to be associated with it. If it means "painful" entitlement cuts for ordinary Americans at a time of massive unemployment, economic anxiety and exploding wealth inequality, so be it.

sooo for what its worth the white house has been pushing back pretty hard on that wapo story all day. i dunno if it was the post getting its shit wrong or a as they say trial balloon that erm popped but for hwatever its worth

also from the Greenwald argument, the heart of Obama (and Gabbnebism) exposed for the all the world to see:

The President obviously believes that being able to run by having made his own party angry -- I cut entitlement programs long cherished by liberals -- will increase his appeal to independents and restore his image of trans-partisan conciliator that he so covets.

and the central flaw of such premises:

But how could it possibly be politically advantageous for a Democratic President to lead the way in slashing programs that have long been the crown jewels of his party, defense of which is the central litmus test for whether someone is even a Democrat?

But how could it possibly be politically advantageous for a Democratic President to lead the way in slashing programs that have long been the crown jewels of his party, defense of which is the central litmus test for whether someone is even a Democrat?

because the imaginary unregistered Democrats they'll register & retain on the strength of gutting party-defining programs will number in the millions! millions, I tell you!

I don't trust "senior administration officials" but The WaPo and NYT stories are multi-sourced, quoting both sides. We'll see.

back in the day (ok three years ago during one of the 2008 primary debates) Obama made some sort of comment about Social Security needing to be "reformed" or something. krugman and some others went ballistic at the time if memory served right ... but then Obama's campaign and the economic shit-storm that broke out later that year obscured all of that.

David Brooks admitted as much in January 2009 after dining with the other conservative columnists and Obama.

Bears repeating:

Of course enough Democrats will get in line behind Obama's proposal to pass it once they're told they must. Similarly, those progressive commentators who are first and foremost Democratic loyalists -- who rose up in angry and effective unison (along with actual progressives) to prevent George Bush from privatizing Social Security in 2005 -- will mount no meaningful opposition out of fear of weakening the President's political prospects. White House aides will just utter Michele Bachmann enough times like some magical spell and snap more than enough people into fear-induced compliance. The last thing the White House is worried about -- the last thing -- is its "base."

lol

who rose up in angry and effective unison (along with actual progressives) to prevent George Bush from privatizing Social Security in 2005 -- will mount no meaningful opposition out of fear of weakening the President's political prospects.

CNN's lead story right now is about Democratic outrcy about this proposal btw (Grivalja, Chu, other House liberals etc)

but let's be clear here - supporting this proposal and supporting his re-election are two different things

the libs made a stink about the tax deal, too. look at where that got them then.

not that there's any benefit in rehearsing these arguments, but if you cast a vote for a politician's reelection, you sign off on his policies

lol

How is endorsing this deal -- if it looks like what we're reading now -- not a tacit endorsement of Obama's reelection prospects, Shakey?

match that with Andy Cuomo trying to out-Christie Christie ... and the NJ Dem muckety-mucks sticking it to public unions recently. well, there are some pretty disheartened and pissed-off Dems up here these days. whether this ends up meaning anything is another matter.

well played max, I lol'd

How is endorsing this deal -- if it looks like what we're reading now -- not a tacit endorsement of Obama's reelection prospects, Shakey?

chant "President Bachman!!" or "President Palin!!" or whatever other liberal bogeyman a zillion times. Greenwald got that right, too.

How is endorsing this deal -- if it looks like what we're reading now -- not a tacit endorsement of Obama's reelection prospects, Shakey?

there are definitely House Dems who would vote against this purported deal and still support him in re-election.

isn't that Greenwald's point?

and their voting against it wouldn't weaken his Presidential prospects in the slightest. This doesn't change the fact that there are a majority of Democrats who will support the president in anything he does (just as a majority of Republicans pretty much always support a Republican president).

But saying the liberal wing of the party isn't going to complain about cutting Social Security/Medicare is just wrong. Knowing their in the minority in both the House and Senate, those liberal Democrats can comfortably vote against any such proposal with the knowledge their votes are largely symbolic and/or beholden to their own districts. And when it comes to the presidential election cycle, no one will care that this liberal minority voted against such a debt-ceiling deal, it won't impact Obama at all.

xp

I got in another argument this weekend with stupid liberals who wanted to chortle over Bachmann's latest outrage. "Never MIND what she said. Did you hear the stupid shit the President said last week?" I said to one.

I suppose the "meaningful" qualifier in Greenwald's statement there is the key. but when have liberals ever mounted meaningful opposition to anything in the last 10 years (Social Security in 2005 is a bad example - that died cuz the GOP didn't actually support it at the time)

tbf Bachmann is funnier

Pelosi says House Dems won't back plan that cuts Social Security

yipeekiyay

Not sure why there's so much hubbub over the concept of changing the inflation index but maybe I'm missing something.

i guess the devil is in the details, but if the inflation index change means that retirees end up getting benefits that don't really keep up with the costs of living then that is in effect a benefits cut.

Pelosi to Obama: "do not consider Social Security a piggy bank for giving tax cuts to the wealthiest people in our country."

Nice sound bite, Nancy. Thanks.

Pelosi says House Dems won't back plan that cuts Social Security

― a man is only a guy (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, July 7, 2011 7:28 PM (3 hours ago)

The White House seems open to tightening the inflation index to rein in future SS benefit growth. Pelosi's ultimatum is similar to the Republican's against all tax increases, even if they involve ending tax breaks. Higher revenues and lower benefits are both necessary to tame future deficits. Entitlement programs are unsustainable thanks to rising health care costs and the Baby Boom retirement. Tax revenues are near historic postwar lows as a result of the recession and the Bush tax cuts.

Pelosi said she wanted to have "full clarity" on the issue, warning the White House, "do not consider Social Security a piggy bank for giving tax cuts to the wealthiest people in our country."

wait what

if anyone wants some practice on the correct way to use the idiom "begging the question", refer to that quote

okay, so let's start talking about viable third party options

*eternal silence*