Politics Plus

Back in 2004, I was one of thousands of Americans who posted a picture of myself holding an “I’m sorry!” sign on a website to apologize to the world for allowing GW Bush to get close enough to steal another election.  Foreigners were saying, and rightly so, that the American public no longer had an excuse, because we became complicit in his crimes by returning him to office.  They did not understand how voters could do such an insane thing.  Since they were right then, it’s no surprise that they are right now.

For several weeks before the recent U.S. election, there was much nervous speculation among Europeans as they watched the fluctuations of the poll numbers.  Now that the results are in, Europeans are perplexed by this turn back toward the politics of the Bush-Cheney era.

Like the rest of the world, Europe cheered the election of Barack Obama as a change from the economic and foreign policy disasters of his predecessor.  Yet just two years later the US government is returning to Bush-lite.  How could this be, Europeans are wondering? The American electorate is looking like a coyote with its leg caught in a trap, chewing its own leg off to get out of the trap.

Europeans are puzzled by the success of the populist Tea Party movement, which seemingly wants to roll back the last two years and return to how things were at the end of the Bush-Cheney years. Even conservatives in Europe are scratching their heads over their transatlantic allies — “Americans don’t want health care??? How can these Tea Party people say ‘Get government out of my Medicare — don’t they know Medicare IS a government program???”

While participating in a conference in Budapest in September, where prominent conservative leaders and thinkers were in attendance, including the president of the European Parliament and two prime ministers, some of the most eye-opening comments had to do with new perceptions about America. One speaker, Christian Stoffaes, who is chairman of the Center for International Prospective Studies based in Paris, stated the "United States is in disarray, extremely polarized. It is practically a civil war there, and you can’t count on it."

This theme was echoed by others speakers, who went even further. One said "We need to shift our emphasis eastward (towards Asia) and not wait for the Obama administration." I found these statements to be surprising, and even vaguely alarming, given the importance of the transatlantic relationship in the post-World War II era. But there was a widespread view that the US is being consumed by the severity of the Great Recession, brought on by a broken Wall Street capitalism, as well as by the quagmires of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, and an inability to change course… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Alternet>

How can we explain to them this change from bad to worse, from ineffective Democratic performance, back to corporate plutocracy?

In case you don’t know, spelunking is the exploration of caves, and Obama appears to be exploring a huge cave on tax cuts.  One could not ask for a finer gift from the Republican Party than this issue. Majorities of Democratic, Independent, and even Republican voters oppose busting the budget to give a tax cut to the top 2%.  Yet Republicans are holding hostage the tax cut for 98% of us, unless the tax cut for the rich is included.  That will cost $40 billion in 2011 alone, $40 billion that could be used for education, infrastructure, small business tax credits for hiring, or other things we desperately need.  We now have our last majority in both houses of Congress that we will have before 2013, if then.  This is our best opportunity.  And if we can’t get a tax cut for the 98% through the lame duck Senate, Republicans will be be blamed.  I’m disabled.  Everything is going up, except my income.  Not getting this tax cut would cause my federal income taxes to increase 50%, so I need that tax cut.  But I would prefer to see Republicans block my tax cut than see Obama cave-in on this issue.

Sorry folks, there’s nothing ambiguous about this: agreeing to the Republican tax cut plan without putting up a fight would pretty much be the textbook definition of caving.

As everybody knows, President Obama’s tax cut proposal would permanently extend middle-income tax cuts but would allow upper-income tax cuts to expire. Everybody would get a tax cut under the Obama plan, but income above $250,000 would return to Clinton-era rates.

Republicans oppose the Obama plan — they want to extend upper-income tax cuts in addition to the middle-income tax cuts. Moreover — and this is crucial for them — Republicans want both tax cuts to remain linked, so that whether they are extended permanently or temporarily, they are not treated as separate tax cuts, otherwise known as decoupling. Republicans know that decoupling the tax cuts would mean the upper-income tax cuts would eventually be phased out because they would not be able to hold middle-income tax cuts hostage, in the process losing their leverage to continue the upper-income tax cuts.

As Greg Sargent points out, any plan that both extends the upper-income tax cuts and fails to decouple them from the middle-income tax cuts represents a clear Republican victory. The Obama administration is now trying to define victory as being any plan that (a) extends middle-income tax cuts and (b) doesn’t include a permanent extension of upper-income tax cuts. Implicit in this is the notion that they will accept a temporary extension of both tax cuts without decoupling… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Daily Kos>

Keith Olbermann and pollster, Sam Greenburg confirm this:

Obama’s earlier position is crystal clear.  It was a campaign promise in 2008.  Last month, I heard him say it in person when he visited Portland.  If Republicans block tax cuts for the 98%, a wage earner with an income of $50,000 per year will pay nearly $2000 more per year in taxes.  A fat cat earing $1,000,000 per year will pay $40,000 more per year than they would under the Democratic plan.  He should dare them to earn all the anger that will bring.  In my opinion, Obama’s political future depends upon him drawing lines in the sand and holding firm, not spelunking.  What better place could there be to draw a line?

Breaking update:  The White House denies the original story and claim they are firm on the issue.

The de facto head of the Republican party bloviated his way into the spotlight again yesterday by accusing Democrats of being racist, while demonstrating by his bigotry that he is the racist in this story.

Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh accused House Democratic leaders of racism today, for attempting to squeeze Jim Clyburn (the highest ranking African-American congressman in history) out of party leadership… only to then suggest that Clyburn would be a good fit for a new position as Nancy Pelosi’s chauffeur…

…If Clyburn loses his race to be Democratic whip, he’ll either have to drop out of party leadership, or move into a lower-ranking leadership position, with fewer perks. Limbaugh claimed that this supposed avarice is what’s animating Clyburn’s fight to stay in leadership… and then noted that Clyburn could keep his car if he was willing to drive around the party’s white leader.

"Clyburn’s new position: driving Ms. Nancy," Limbaugh said. "He’s not in the back of the bus, he’s in the driver’s seat. And she’s in the back of the car being chauffeured."… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <TPM>

Race has nothing to do with this.  Assuming that Pelosi becomes the mew minority leader, Hoyer wants to move down to Whip replacing Clyburn.  Personally, I prefer Clyburn.

Why does Rush act in such an obscene manner?  The Republican base loves it!

Before we begin, I want to make it clear that the proposed draft from the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is just the opinion of two men, one Republican Plutocon, who had been out to kill Social Security for decades, and one notorious DINO.  It is unlikely that anything anywhere near this will get the fourteen votes needed to recommend it.  I have read the entire report, and I am flabbergasted.  Not everything in the report is bad.  Some of the defense cuts and waste cuts made pretty good sense.  Bowles said they had “harpooned both whales and minnows”.  That is true.  What he did not say is that, if you happen to be a whale, your harpoon is a tooth pick, and if you happen to be a minnow, your harpoon is a telephone pole.  The lower your income, the more draconian the cuts will be.  Simpson and Bowles would balance the budget on the backs of the poor, the elderly, the sick, and working men and women.  The bottom 10% get a 50% tax increase, even before losing the automatic deduction.  When Obama appointed this commission, he did so early on in the false hope that Republicans would work together with Democrats for the good of the nation.  He screwed up!

The release Wednesday of a draft proposal for reducing the federal deficit made clear how hard it will be to devise a sustainable plan that can win the necessary political support.

Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, co-chairmen of President Obama’s federal deficit commission, offered up a wide-ranging set of ideas that would bring $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade.

Their package touched every aspect of government, combining deep spending cuts with tax increases to eventually bring both expenditures and revenue to 21 percent of gross domestic product.

Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, called the scope of the initial plan "the first time in my memory of Washington … that it’s all there."

"We have harpooned every whale in the ocean," he told a news conference with Bowles, the former chief of staff for Democratic President Bill Clinton.

The draft plan will be debated and revised by the commission before a December 1 deadline, but immediate reaction ranged from cautious consideration to outright rejection on both the political right and left.

Outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a liberal Democrat, called the proposal "simply unacceptable," and two Democratic commission members voiced initial opposition while a third mixed praise with serious reservations.

Retiring GOP Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, a deficit hawk on the commission, called the draft plan "aggressive and comprehensive" but added he hoped it could be improved, while conservative tax reform advocate Grover Norquist flatly rejected any tax increases to reduce the deficit.

Obama, who is in Asia, was noncommittal, according to White House spokesman Bill Burton.

"The president will wait until the bipartisan fiscal commission finishes its work before commenting," said Burton, who called the draft "a step in the process towards coming up with a set of recommendations."

If 14 of the 18 commission members agree on a final plan, it will go up for a vote by the lame-duck Congress that serves until the end of the year. If not, the panel’s work will serve as the basis for continuing efforts to come up with legislation in the new Congress that will convene in January, this time with Republicans in control of the House.

Either way, a bitter political debate is certain… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <CNN>

Perhaps part of the reason it is so outrageous is that Corporocons and Plutocons donated staff.

…But the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform has also come under attack for its unusual approach to staffing: Many of its employees aren’t employed by the panel at all.

Instead, about one in four commission staffers is paid by outside entities, many of which have strong ideological points of view about how to tackle the deficit.

For example, the salaries of two senior staffers, Marc Goldwein and Ed Lorenzen, are paid by private groups that have previously advocated cuts to entitlement programs. Lorenzen is paid by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, while Goldwein is paid by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which is also partly funded by the Peterson group.

The outsourcing has come under sharp criticism from seniors’ organizations and liberal activists, who say the strategy is part of a broader conservative bias favoring painful entitlement cuts over other solutions. The fears of some liberal groups appeared to come true on Wednesday, when the commission’s two leaders recommended significant reductions for Social Security and other social-welfare programs… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Washington Post>

How’s that for bias?

Obama should have staked out a Democratic policy in advance, instead of using something as a starting point that is skewed so far to the right that it would make Himmler blush!  The best video coverage of this I have found is from Keith Olbermann, who devoted two segments of his show to it.  In the first, he and Representative Anthony Weiner discuss the Commission’s preference for targeting those who are least responsible for the mess and most hurt by the recommendations.

In the second, he and Howard Fineman discuss reactions and the unlikelihood that anything like this will get the needed fourteen votes.

Obama needs to realize, once and for all, that bipartisanship will cost him his job and cost us out future.

As the resident , please know that this is NOT my cat food!