Stock Markets Tremble As Debt Ceiling Debate Rages In Washington [UPDATE] | HuffPost Impact This my be a terrible move with serious consequences.
The people who are baggers jumped on a train wreck thinking it was taking them to a brighter future. It is very clear that they only promise disaster. We all are suffering for their lack of sophistication. They see the world in simple cartoon terms ,and are unable to see the ramifications of their childish concepts.
They think the government is a necessary evil. I see the baggers as a unnecessary evil. They are causing a lot of destruction.
Which principles?
If such a compromise is the only way to avert disaster, yes. Not only should he, he must. The only real question is whether or not he is convinced that the rightarded nutbars will actually shoot the dog. We are not talking about sophisticated thinkers here, so the answer may well be yes, they will. Or yes, they will inadvertently, they will stumble and blunder their way into a mess they do not fully comprehend. Its a Guns of August scenario.
The President might well be in a situation where to save the Republic from the Republicans, he must cave to irrational demands. he must humiliate himself. Ask yourself: if irrevocably screwing himself out of any chance for re-election were the only way to avert catastrophe, would he do it? I think he would.
Would Eric Cantor?
I think Cantor increases his effectiveness as a negotiator to the extent that he makes the other side believe the answer is “no”. Which isn’t to say the answer is “no”.
Perhaps Obama is poisoning the well on purpose. I am royally pissed off at Obama but when I see what the Republican party is willing to do to the economy, then any thoughts of staying home on election night next year evaporate.
By all accounts this debt ceiling debate is turning people (and not just feckless independents but conservatives like you) away from the Republicans and towards the Democrats while doing little to improve support for the Republicans.
Mainstream Republicans have painted themselves into a corner by committing to no compromise while taking the US economy (and really the global economy) hostage. They can’t appear to be compromising and Obama can keep asking Republicans to do things that the Republicans have sworn on the eyes of their children they would never do.
If Obama planned on this all along, then I will be humbled by the worlds most amazing rope a dope in history.
I have been saying for some time that The Republicans always raise because Obama always folds.
If Obama was just letting the Republicans believe that they can walk all over him so that they overplay their hand and become pot committed on a bluff so he could raise their bluff and knock them off the table then I will never doubt Obama again (at least until the next time).
Yeah and it seems to be working.
Like I said, perhaps Obama is intentionally poisoning the well because right now the whole debt ceiling thing is working out pretty ood for the Democrats. I had told my wife that we wouldn’t be making political contributions this year but recently I donated some money to Democratic leaning PACs.
I agree with this statement but for your consideration I would like to point out that for job creators, the difference between capital gains and dividends can be a matter of form and structure. Dividends can only come from earnings and profits and a small business owner can frequently extract their enterprise profits in the form of dividends OR capital gains.
I would also like to point out that there once was a time when people used to “invest” in life insurance and annuity contracts because the tax deferral was worth tying up your money until you got old. These days the capital gains rate is so low that people don’t really look for the deferral anymore, we have life insurance companies selling insurance products that offer immediate capital gains recognition on what otherwise looks a lot like insurance products.
Raising taxes on those making more than $250,000, and protecting Social Security and Medicare benefits. Or were you not listening for 18 months?
We are the “job creators”. When we spend our money, we create the jobs, we create the demand. I’m not crazy about a consumerist economy, but it is what it is, and for the time being, we are stuck with it.
The Republican “job creators” theme is total bullshit. “If we tax the rich, they won’t invest!” As if they were going to invest in more production, more jobs in production, to produce things no one will buy. Why in Og’s name would I believe that?
Before becoming President, Obama talked a lot about bipartisan cooperation and finding common ground – so how else can he cooperate when partisans reveal just how small that common ground really is?
Sorry…you don’t get to decide what my statement was about. My statement was perfectly clear.
YES!!! Perhaps we can give you votes according to the quare footage in your home or perhaps we can solve our budget issues by letting people buy extra votes. Obama won the last election by less than 10 million votes and to be fair most of that excess came from states like California. Obama won the last election 365 electoral votes to 175 electoral votes so if they could have swung 100 electoral votes then the would have the white house (and probably both houses of congress) right now. Colorado 9 (215K vote margin); Florida 27 (240K vote margin); Indiana 11 (30K vote margin); New Hampshire 4 (70K vote margin); New Mexico 5 (130K vote margin); North Carolina 15 (20K vote margin); Ohio 20 (300K vote margin); Virginia 13 (235K vote margin). So for about 1.25 million votes they could have swung 101 electoral votes. At $1000/vote, you only end up with 1.25 billion dolars. this seems too cheap. Perhaps $10K/vote makes mroe sense.
At the very least it should give you some perspective on how important your vote is if you live in these states. I used to live in DC and my vote basically didn’t count. Now that I live in Virginia, I actually got robocalls during the last election cycle.
Conservatives think “common ground” is code for weakness and a willingness to roll over whenever threatened. Guess they were wrong. To remain faithful to his principles, there must be no cuts to Social Security or Medicare benefits, and raise revenue by cutting tax breaks to the wealthy and cutting corporate welfare. If Republicans want common ground, that is where they will find it.
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that while it perhaps was not part of the official Obama platform, “avoiding economic catastrophe and a second Great Depression, and the impoverishment of millions of Americans and resulting misery and death, all due to the intransigence of a radical, simpleton-filled wing of one party” was probably something Obama assumed went without saying.
My words are crystal clear. It is your comprehension that is a bit cloudy.
Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps they vote to expand the size of government and entitlement programs. Maybe they are smart enough to realize that raising taxes or expanding government more will harm them in the long run. I don’t know the answer but I certainly do not like the decision being left to 47% who don’t contribute to the federal income tax pot.
I’ll have to agree with Obama that raising taxes in a recession is a bad idea.
We don’t know that yet.
What if they offer half of that? Obama campaigned on finding common ground; the GOP didn’t; should he take the only common ground they offer, or reject it?
Okay, so what happens if the GOP offers a plan that avoids said catastrophe and Great Depression? I mean, it’ll include a lot of other stuff he dislikes, but if it’s got that covered, then what does the went-without-saying principle dictate?
Reject it. Conservatives must offer a compromise of their principles if they expect the same from the president. They won’t because Boehner is, as yet, still terrrified of the Tea Party. When his corporate handlers jerk his chain hard enough, he will dump the Tea Party and follow the money, as mainstream Republicans always do.
He takes it, he has to. And then he waits for them to try and make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Which they will.
That poses a very interesting question: are they still in charge?
For years and years, they have managed to exploit the cultural conservatives and religious whackos to their advantage. Like when the gay marriage issue suddenly appeared on all the state referenda, right in time for the election. And we always said, this bargain is weak, sooner or later, it catches up with them. He who rides the tiger dare not dismount.
The Tea Party whackos are not under anybody’s control, nor have we any reason to believe they are all that sympathetic to the rich and powerful, there is a distinct populist theme. So far, the corporatists have tried to control the Tea Party by setting up their own Tea Party centers, so now there are several official “Tea Parties” run by professional political operatives. Dick Armey’s Tea Party Express is the best example.
If you are lucky and careful, you can exploit crazy and stupid. But control it?
Since over and over again, it has been shown that cutting taxes does not create jobs, when do we abandon the concept as a quaint sophistry?
Even Nordquist has decided letting the Bush tax cuts end, is not a tax raise. Since he is one of the people who spearheaded the cuts, I would conclude that he sees what damage it has caused. Why can’t you?
Nordquist still disagrees with letting the Bush tax cuts expire but claims that’s not technically a tax hike…thus not breaking their pledge. Where do you get that Nordquist thinks the tax cuts have caused any damage?