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

If Congress does not raise the debt limit, 42 percent of American adults say Republicans will be "mainly responsible," according to a June poll conducted by the Pew Research Center and Washington Post. Some 33 percent cited the Obama administration, and the rest answered both, neither, or unsure.

i find it really hard to believe that 75% of American adults (42%+33%) understand the debt limit issue at even the most basic level.

James Inhofe continues to be giant fucking douche.

Such arrogance. But I guess Oklahoma likes that.

"I did nothing wrong..." Actually, Senator, you did.

Yeah I mean talk about calling something its own opposite and just putting it out there in the press as truth. Classic example.

arrrrgh this fucking guy

The latest laff riot from homeland security and the US terror threat assessment crew:

http://sitrep.globalsecurity.org/articles/110706775-the-joker-bomb.htm

out of my way, i'm a united states senator!!

President Obama is pressing congressional leaders to consider a far-reaching debt-reduction plan that would force Democrats to accept major changes to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for Republican support for fresh tax revenue.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-debt-talks-obama-offers-social-security-cuts/2011/07/06/gIQA2sFO1H_story.html

oyyyyyyyyyyyy

this is not actually surprising just disappointing right?

Mr. Obama, who is to meet at the White House with the bipartisan leadership of Congress in an effort to work out an agreement to raise the federal debt limit, wants to move well beyond the $2 trillion in savings sought in earlier negotiations and seek perhaps twice as much over the next decade, Democratic officials briefed on the negotiations said Wednesday. (<that's from the NYT article)

the doubling of the "savings" is surprising to me, although i have to admit i haven't followed it too closely over the last few days because i assumed it would go down to the wire.

i dunno what counts as a "surprise" anymore tbh

well like if he or any of our elected officials gained the power of flight and used it at a news conference, that would be a surprise

i'm really looking forward to these austerity measures, i've heard they've worked so well in the rest of the world

surely some things would shock even u -- like if obama was secretly preparing camps to use to imprison dissident internet posters, i wouldn't be mocked on this thread for being shocked and surprised, rite? xp

he is preparing camps btw. they're all in hardee's locations. you been in a hardee's lately? me neither...no one has..

i'm not surprised. just disappointed.

glad i've been drinking for a few hours at least

i dunno what counts as a "surprise" anymore tbh

http://rpmedia.ask.com/ts?u=/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a1/Homer_Dole_Clinton.png/200px-Homer_Dole_Clinton.png

So once he tries to sell out the Dems to get a deal, does he really think independent voters are going to say "Yes, a deficit and debt deal for 4 billion instead of 2," that's our guy; and that the Republicans are going to turn around and join everyone else in saying "where are the jobs"? Whoever is doing the "White House polling" for him (that reinforces Obama's own personal view that he needs to be bipartisan) and that suggests this is the best course for him and the country, is probably the same pollster who said don't push for a bigger stimulus or get too tough on Wall Street.

and doesn't he realize that the Republicans are going to turn around and join everyone else in saying "where are the jobs" once a debt deal is finished?

Whoever is doing the "White House polling" for him (that reinforces Obama's own personal view that he needs to be bipartisan) and that suggests this is the best course for him and the country, is probably the same pollster who said don't push for a bigger stimulus or get too tough on Wall Street.

it's probably not a pollster. he has enough people on-staff to tell him all of this.

maybe he reads a lot of op-eds

Thom Friedman

pretty interesting polling stuff here

fwiw I think this generally supports what I've been saying about the GOP's presidential prospects - there simply aren't enough loony right-winger conservatives to elect Michelle Bachmann president, and if they nominate a "moderate" like Romney then odds are they will split the party and lose.

biggest eye-opener to me was that the percentage of Democrats who define themselves as "liberal" has increased from 28% to 41% since 1984

the percentage of Democrats who define themselves as "liberal" has increased from 28% to 41% since 1984

that's not Democrats, it's "people voting Democrat for US House"

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.