"Against the Boehner Plan"

[Imran Siddiqui]

No, Obama is not far left for America.

QFT. He's left, but calling him "far left" is laughable.

[Zevico]

QFT. He's left, but calling him "far left" is laughable.

Debates about terminology don't matter so much as ideas and how one puts them into practice.

In fairness, he did have Reverend "God Damn America" Wright as his church leader for quite some time. To put up with that you do need, shall we say, to adhere, or at any rate find something tolerable in 'unconventional' views about the role, history and purpose of the United States of America. His continued association with Wright up to partway through is election campaign is not exactly a sterling mark on his resume. It does indicate a willingness to entertain and associate oneself with the proponents of radical left wing and racist ideology.

That aside, there has not ever been any serious national interest argument for the bombing of Libya. The responsibility to protect doctrine is, frankly, a waste of the United States' blood and treasure; and in circumstances where its use is really quite questionable. So on the foreign policy front, his views are, to put it kindly, confused thought bubbles rather than well thought out doctrines to which American leaders of either party (and I include Sec. State Clinton) have traditionally adhered.

[Dinner]

Seriously? This is supposed to be a good article?

You have to remember it's from the national review which is the right wing ******** periodical of choice so it is the home of liars, retards, and drooling idiots every where. BTW it is two days until Republicans force a default for no other reason then they want to destroy the national economy.

[Zevico]

You have to remember it's from the national review which is the right wing ******** periodical of choice so it is the home of liars, retards, and drooling idiots every where. BTW it is two days until Republicans force a default for no other reason then they want to destroy the national economy.

Really? This is the Americans' national conversation? Grown men calling one another names? You do yourself a disservice.

[Dinner]

Yes, really. Republicans claim defaulting on the national debt is a good thing and they want to force a default even there is no logical reason. The interest rate on the t-bill is near 0% so it isn't like normal people are upset. Republicans simply hate America and want to destoy it because it doesn't follow their beliefs.

[Zevico]

Yes, really. Republicans claim defaulting on the national debt is a good thing

Strange that they've come to an agreement, I suppose. This must be because default is a good thing?

and they want to force a default even there is no logical reason.

Which is why an agreement has been reached.

The author of the article calls for the United States to cut spending. He is unimpressed with the promise of future cuts, simply because they did not eventuate when promised before; he suggests cutting costs now. Nowhere in that article does he state that the United States should default on its debts.

All said and done I think that's a very sensible policy proposal, quite simply because there is no convincing reason to increase or maintain spending at its current levels while the budget continues to go into deficit. Raising taxes won't solve the problem. The fact is that the US federal budget is being spent on programs that are going to keep costing the American public more and more money. You can't raise taxes fast enough.

Is it so radical to propose a rethink of a budgetary policy that promises a ten decade schedule of deficits, with no end to the deficits in sight and no plan to even address them? Is calling for such a plan an attempt to "destroy America"? Really?

[The Mad Monk]

........Debt Crisis: Countdown to Aug. 2

How the Tea Party Won the Deal
By Peter Beinart | The Daily Beast – 7 hrs ago

While the details of the debt ceiling deal remain fuzzy, this much is clear: Barack Obama may be president, but the Tea Party is now running Washington. How did this happen? Simple; this is what American politics looks like when there’s no left-wing movement and no war.

Let’s start with the first point. Liberals are furious that President Obama agreed to massive spending cuts, and the promise of more, without any increase in revenues. They should be: Given how much the Bush tax cuts have contributed to the deficit (and how little they’ve spurred economic growth), it’s mind-boggling that they’ve apparently escaped this deficit-reduction deal unscathed.

But there’s a reason for that: since the economy collapsed in 2008, only one grassroots movement has emerged in response, and it’s been a movement of the right. Compare that with what happened during the Depression. In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt assumed the presidency and launched the hodgepodge of domestic programs that historians call the first New Deal. By 1935, however, he was looking warily over his left shoulder at Huey Long, whose “Share our Wealth” movement demanded that incomes be capped at $1 million and every family be guaranteed an income no less than one-third the national average.

At the same time, the Townsend plan to guarantee generous pensions to every elderly American had organizers in every state in the union. To be sure, FDR had vehement opponents on his right, but he was at least as concerned about the populist left, which helps explain why he enacted the more ambitious “second new deal,” which included Social Security, the massive public jobs program called the Works Progress Administration and the Wagner Act, which for the first time in American history put Washington on the side of labor unions.

Obama, like FDR, had a reasonably successful first two years: a stimulus package that while too small for the circumstances was still large by historical standards and a health care bill that while subpar in myriad ways still far exceeded the efforts of other recent Democratic presidents.

And then, unlike FDR, he ran into a grassroots movement of the right. Historians will long debate why the financial collapse of 2008 produced a right-wing populist movement and not a left-wing one. Perhaps it’s because Obama didn’t take on Wall Street, perhaps it’s because with labor unions so weak there’s just not the organizational muscle to create such a movement, perhaps it’s because trust in government is so low that pro-government populism is almost impossible.

Whatever the reason, it was the emergence of the Tea Party as the most powerful grassroots pressure group in America that laid the groundwork for Sunday night’s deal. The fact that polling showed Obama getting the better of the debt ceiling debate barely mattered. The 2010 elections brought to Congress a group of Republicans theologically committed to cutting government. And they have proved more committed, or perhaps just more reckless, than anyone else in Washington.

But it’s not just the absence of a mass left-wing movement that explains last night’s deal. It’s the end of the war on terror. From 9/11 until George W. Bush left office, the “war on terror” defined the Republican Party. That meant massive increases in defense and homeland security spending, but it also meant increases in domestic spending—such as the 2004 prescription drug bill—aimed at ensuring that Bush got reelected, so he could perpetuate the war on terror. In that way, “war on terror” politics resembled cold war politics, in which the right’s desire for guns and the left’s desire for butter usually combined to ensure that all forms of government spending went up.

The Tea Party, by contrast, is a post-war on terror phenomenon. Many of the newly-elected Republicans are indifferent, if not hostile, to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They’re happy to cut the defense budget, especially since cutting the defense budget makes it easier to persuade Democrats to swallow larger cuts in domestic spending. It’s the reverse of the cold war dynamic. During the cold war—especially in the Nixon and Reagan years--conservatives accepted that overall spending would go up in order to ensure that some that increase went to defense. Today, conservatives accept defense cuts in order to ensure that overall spending goes down.

The good news is that the Tea Party, more than Barack Obama, has now ended the neoconservative dream of an ever-expanding American empire. The bad news is that it has also ended whatever hopes liberals once entertained that roughly 100 years after Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, roughly 75 years after the New Deal and roughly 50 years after the Great Society, we were living in another great age of progressive reform.

Given the era of fiscal scarcity we’re now entering, those neocon and progressive dreams are now likely dead for many years to come. Meanwhile, the Tea Party’s dream of a government reduced to its pre-welfare state size becomes ever real.

http://news.yahoo.com/tea-party-won-deal-055100156.html

[Riesstiu IV]

At this point, I'm pretty sure I'll never see a social security check in my life.

[Zevico]

Mad Monk:

To my knowledge no one has ever dreamt, or dreams of, an 'expanding American empire.' If you think otherwise then refer me to the author, and to those who agree with him, who advocate for that 'dream,' and to statements by them to that effect.

[Riesstiu IV]

Anyone associated with the PNAC pipedream favored expanding the American Empire.

[The Mad Monk]

Mad Monk:

To my knowledge no one has ever dreamt, or dreams of, an 'expanding American empire.' If you think otherwise then refer me to the author, and to those who agree with him, who advocate for that 'dream,' and to statements by them to that effect.

No worries, the author is just establishing his liberal credentials.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Really? This is the Americans' national conversation? Grown men calling one another names? You do yourself a disservice.

Wised to him, ehh? Its a disservice with each and every one of his posts. Each post should have a truth in advertising sticker on it, giving clear indication that exposure to these kinds of posts kills brain cells.

[giblets]

Wow...

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2011/im.../21/rel11b.pdf

It almost seems like the Democrats are more in line with public opinion

[The Mad Monk]

Interview with Tea Party Co-Founder Mark Meckler
'We Have Compromised Our Way Into Disaster'

AFP
About 74 percent of the Tea Party Patriots in the US want Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner (center) to go.
Mark Meckler, 49, the co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots in the United States, talks to SPIEGEL about the US debt ceiling, the radical right's uncompromising fight against the national debt and the "complete economic disaster" he claims President Barack Obama has created.

SPIEGEL: The world is looking at Washington and sees gridlock and chaos. How much have the negotiations over the United States' debt ceiling hurt America's standing in the world?


Meckler: Saying that these debates have hurt our image is absurd. What you currently see in Washington is one of the most responsible debates ever about the size and scope of government. The world should look at what is going on in the United States as a model for what should happen in all countries.

SPIEGEL: We look at it and see a Congress held hostage by a small group of radical Tea Party members unwilling to agree to any budget compromise and risking a US default.

Meckler: What do you mean by "a small group?" Forty-one percent of voters in the last US election said they agreed with Tea Party values. And the primary values of the Tea Party are about fiscal responsibility.

SPIEGEL: But you are willing to accept a US default if your demands for massive budget cuts and no tax increases are not met. That seems rather irresponsible or even unpatriotic. Most leading economists forecast financial "Armageddon" in that case.

Meckler: Default is a false threat. We take in over $220 billion in revenues every month and our debt service is only roughly $20 billion. The only way we will default is if the President of the United States makes the irresponsible choice not to pay our debts. We Tea Party Patriots put principles first, and we have to understand what America is about. Our country was founded on an idea: liberty. But it requires fiscal responsibility for people to be free. We are becoming slaves to our own government. Every US family now owes $400,000 to $500,000 in national debt. We Tea Party Patriots fight for the future of the nation, and there can be nothing more patriotic than that.

SPIEGEL: Democracy is not just about winning fights. It can only function if all parties are open to compromise.

Meckler: The compromises that we have witnessed on debt have taken our country to the brink of financial collapse. Currently, the American government is spending 44 cents of each dollar on interest payments. We have compromised our way into disaster. None of the budget plans proposed have real cuts in them -- only promises to cut. The reality is that legally one Congress cannot bind the future Congress to cut, so these promises are actually a lie. We need real and immediate cuts.

SPIEGEL: The budget plan proposed by Republican speaker John Boehner contained massive spending cuts. Why were you so unwilling to embrace it?

Meckler: Look closely at the plan: It proposes $22 billion in cuts in the upcoming fiscal year. That is ridiculously little. It is the equivalent in the United States of shutting off the lights on Friday night and reopening at your normal rate of spending on Monday.

SPIEGEL: The plan also rules out any tax increases to close the deficit, though. Even the plan of the Democrats does not mention new taxes. So your movement already won the debate over taxes.

Meckler: This debate is not about taxes. This is a question of spending. There is no amount of taxes that we could raise that would stop our deficit spending caused by politicians who have lied so often.

SPIEGEL: Your movement often refers to Ronald Reagan, the Republican icon. But he raised taxes 11 times and the debt ceiling 18 times.

Meckler: At no time did he control both houses of Congress, so often he had no choice. But Reagan got attacked viciously by conservatives over this, just as we would attack any Republican president in the future if he did something similar.

SPIEGEL: The US economy is still growing very slowly. If you cut government spending drastically now, you will risk having a double-dip recession.

Meckler: That is simply wrong. Government spending is never efficient.

SPIEGEL: But in the short run, the cuts will lead to even higher US unemployment.

Meckler: Possibly on a minimal level. But we have worried about the short term for so long that we have damaged the long-term prospects of our nation. Look at what is going on in Europe: Spain is a complete disaster. It has more vacant homes than we have here, with only 40 million people. Italy is a complete disaster. Europe is going down the same path as the US, only many countries are far ahead and don't take corrective action.

SPIEGEL: Speaker Boehner failed several times to rally Republicans around his plans. Does he need to go?

Meckler: We have polled our membership and 74 percent of our members in our 3,500 chapters said it is time to look at new leadership.

SPIEGEL: And should he be replaced by a Tea Party representative?


Meckler: The ultimate goal is to have somebody in the House who is fiscally responsible. We have changed the debate in the United States, which is a pretty radical thing to do in such a short period of time. The question back then was: "How much more will we spend next year, not how much can we cut?" But you will see much more profound change in 2012.

SPIEGEL: Who could be the Tea Party candidate in the next presidential election?

Meckler: The movement has no clear preference. Our members are taking a cool and careful look at all the candidates on the Republican side. I am actually glad people are not more excited and blown away. The last time we saw that on the campaign trail, the country got Barack Obama in the White House -- and that led to complete economic disaster.

Interview conducted by Marc Hujer and Gregor Peter Schmitz

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,777705,00.html

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Damn those just say no terrorists.



http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/201...-in-the-house/