Well, if you’re John Boehner, you spray on a fresh tan, squirt a few fresh tears, then make a big ol’ pitcher of surrender-ade:
Having difficulty finding consensus within their own ranks, House Republican leaders have begun courting moderate Democrats on several key fiscal issues, including a deal to avoid a government shutdown at the end of next week.
The basic outline would involve more than $30 billion in cuts for the 2011 spending package, well short of the $61 billion initially demanded by freshman Republicans and other conservatives, according to senior aides in both parties. Such a deal probably would be acceptable to Senate leaders and President Obama as long as the House didn’t impose funding restrictions on certain social and regulatory programs supported by Democrats, Senate and administration aides said.
The fact that Republican leaders have initiated talks with some Democrats shows some division within House Republicans just two months after taking over the House. Speaker John A. Boehner’s leadership team recognizes that legislation that meets with approval from his most conservative flank — what Democrats call the “perfectionist caucus” — would be dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
— And if you’re a GOP establishment type, it is far better to pretend to do something than it is to get your hands dirty actually doing it.
What’s most depressing, should this deal come to pass (and there are plenty of depressing moments to choose from) , is that all of these cuts were cuts the Dems were prepared to make anyway — and much of the money cut isn’t even real; instead, it’s money found through manipulation of numbers and all sort of predictable DC accounting massages.
The bottom line is, we are not being represented by the leadership we installed. And that’s because the leadership is comprised of the very kind of feckless, impotent, cowardly career politicians whom we worked so hard to rid ourselves of in November.
Rather than shut down the government and make their case to the American people that these proposed cuts the Dems are offering amount to less than 1% of a budget stuffed with $1.65 trillion in deficit spending — and that, in five working days, the government will have spent again what they just ostensibly “cut” — the GOP is ready to roll over, claim a minor victory, and move on to business as usual.
Rather than point out that the Democrats have admitted that their plan is to launch a dishonest propaganda campaign against those very taxpayers who rose up in November to demand reform and fiscal sanity — and to say that they won’t be cowed by such loathsome behavior, nor will they allow the next generation to be enslaved by those who seek to blackmail us into fiscal ruin — our representatives, led by an airbrushed party hack, have decided simply to surrender.
I’m actually embarrassed for the guy.
And I despair for what was once the greatest country on earth, ever.
(thanks to I. Callahan)
If this story is true, Boehner needs to resign immediately.
For years I’ve doubted that the DC machinery has anything to do with the voter.
It’s past time to wise up. Who’s running the country and how?
I understand how the British must have felt under Chamberlain. Where is our Winston?
I’m about to the point where I’m ready to sharpen my pitchfork and light a torch… thuggery works pretty well for the other side, maybe we should give it a try, too.
Math is so hard for some, but pictures are said to help the illiterate if not the willfully obtuse.
I’m about to the point where I’m ready to sharpen my pitchfork and light a torch… thuggery works pretty well for the other side, maybe we should give it a try, too.
Might as well. We get accused of it anyway.
I’m about to the point where I’m ready to sharpen my pitchfork and light a torch… thuggery works pretty well for the other side, maybe we should give it a try, too.
This is the outcome I fear. Somewhat perversely, it’s also the outcome I look forward to.
I honestly thought that the 2010 elections would serve as a wake-up call to our Congress and Legislatures. I thought we more than adequately broadcast our belief that spending was way out of control, that the government’s scope was way too broad, and that the time had come to pull back. I thought we’d given our representatives permission to make difficult policy decisions, secure in the knowledge that we would stand behind them.
I was mistaken.
Our leadership lacks the ability to listen to us, the ability to make tough decisions, or both. The bureaucracy heard the warning shot, but (unsurprisingly) is spending its efforts preparing for war rather than prepare for an orderly unwinding. They think that by fleeing the state or grandstanding or taking over government buildings or rioting or threatening violence against us, that they will continue to enjoy their cushy lifestyle at our continuing expense.
They are mistaken.
The money is gone. There is no more. The feds are spending imaginary money that our grandchildren will have to repay, one way or another. The states are just desperately pretending that they’re not bankrupt, looking for the next bailout. The leftists believe that we’re ‘attacking’ them out of some partisan petulance, as though this were a personal attack on our part. They refuse to believe or to understand that we’re just trying to protect ourselves, our children, and our neighbors from the crash that’s coming.
The plane is out of fuel; it ran out quite a while ago. We’re attempting an emergency landing, knowing full well that the result is going to be ugly, but we’re determined that all three hundred million of our fellow passengers will walk away from it with the minimum possible injury. These assholes in Washington and Madison and Sacramento keep pushing the stick forward, putting us into a catastrophic nosedive. And they refuse to let go of the controls, because the power thrills them, and because they understand that the worse things are, the more they can wring out of the frightened passengers.
This bird is going down, and fast. We need representatives and leaders who will pull back on the stick. Just leaving the controls where they are, as we continue to plummet toward the Earth, is not sufficient. Not by a long shot.
The legalized looting is coming to an end, simply because there’s nothing left to loot. If we’re smart (and lucky), this all ends in demonstrations on our campuses and in our cities, with mayors and governors looking to their state police and National Guard to supplement (or replace) local law enforcement. If not, it ends with the looters continuing to take from their neighbors, except without all the bureaucratic niceties. I doubt that neighbors taking directly from neighbors will end well; not when decent people see thuggery as the only method that works. Pitchforks will be the least of anyone’s worries. And if things really go down the shitter, we may live to see a Good Man who promises to restore order if we just give him what he wants. That always ends well.
This war that we’re fighting against the bureaucrats, the legislators, the class warriors, the unions, and their various tax-sucking constituencies is a war that soon will be over; basic arithmetic allows nothing else. In the end, everyone is going to lose. We’re just fighting over how much, and in what manner.
But hey — the S&P is up over 1,325, so what’s to worry about?
I’m at a loss. I would wail about the unfairness of it all, with the left having a full-time, fully-paid cadre of activists (academia, union, the posse of fruit-loop groups, and of course the MFM) against citizen volunteers, but of course that’s useless. How do we regain the momentum, break through the wall of lies, partial truths, and disinformation and get people engaged again?
And if our Great Experiment fails, where the hell are we going?
I honestly thought that the 2010 elections would serve as a wake-up call to our Congress and Legislatures. […] I was mistaken.
Likewise. I feel pretty foolish now. (“I just don’t understand – after the night we spent together, he promised he’d call!”)
But the GOP seems determined to surrender to somebody, and since thuggery obviously influences them, maybe Tea Partiers ought to start living up to our “violent” reputations and doing exactly what the left does. (Since that’s obviously a socially acceptable level of violence.) Take over their offices. Whip up an angry mob and go protest at their homes. We should give the GOP a reason to surrender to US instead of the left.
It’s Pledge Drive time at my community radio station, which means another opportunity for me to speak face-to-face with the lovely hippies who volunteer to
manperson the phones. On Sunday, it was a 20-something starving artist, bemoaning the current state of the Twin Cities art community.I expressed my lack of surprise, and explained that the funding agencies’ primary function is growing the funding agencies. Given the choice between funding a $50,000 fellowship, and funding a $50,000 bullshit position in their own org charts, they’re going to pick the latter every time. They don’t exist to distribute the maximum amount of funding for the arts; they exist to distribute the minimum amount of funding necessary to justify their own budgets.
Lovely girl. I feel kinda guilty about ruining her life; it’s like telling a little kid that there’s no such thing as Santa. But part of me hopes that I’ve sown seeds that will one day bear fruit.
I……fuck it. Just fuck it.
This will all end in tears.
And fire.
Lots and lots of fire…