Anybody ready for a third party yet?
****
update: Boehner may have just saved himself, depending on what kind of “tax loopholes” get closed in any eventual deal.
Incidentally, let me just mention to Mr Balz, whose article it seems is trying to cast the GOP as somehow villainous for not accepting the comprehensive budget plan under discussion, that if the President really wanted to reform entitlement programs, he wouldn’t have held firm to a plan to increase taxes during what is for all intents and purposes a depression — with real unemployment at nearly 11.5 percent.
In fact, if he really wanted to increase revenue, he’d lower taxes and rein in the regulatory agencies.
He’s a class warrior and a Marxist. He wants wealth redistributed, and he wants the power to do the redistributing. “Fundamentally transforming” the US ends with a benevolent king taking from the “wealthy” and dispensing it to the woeful. Once the king’s beak — and the beaks of his court — have first been whetted, naturally.
$2T is one (unsecured) percent of the arrears.
Motherfuckers.
I like how they conveniently leave out the word “projected” when fantasizing about the increased revenues tax increases are going to bring. I know junior high schoolers with more economic sense.
Fucked we are.
$2T over ten years…that’s a whopping deficit cut of $200 billion out of deficits that lately have been well over a trillion. This isn’t a serious proposal. Hell, a cut of $4T over ten years wasn’t serious. We’re still talking about massive bleeding.
Third party? Hell yes, bring it on.
Third Party? How about a GOP House Speaker with a backbone.
Allen West comes to mind…
We’re probably just fucked. As others have already twice mentioned in only three comments.
I should hit “submit comment” a bit quicker and maybe my math would add up.
It’s not like I proofread or think about my comments all that much. Yes, I know, that’s fairly obvious.
Not that a “sense of the Senate” vote really means anything.
…may be playing a dangerous game.
Oh. Wrong fucking thread. It’s that kind of day.
I’m not sure if Doug saw this:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_DEBT_SHOWDOWN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-07-09-20-26-39
I’m not getting the impression that Boehner’s going to fold on taxes, but there is a danger of him signing onto a smaller package of cuts for an equal magnitude increase in the debt limit.
I guess we’ll see more tomorrow, but I’d only warm the tar and bundle the feathers for now :)
JHoward,
I imagine West has no real expectations that Obama will back any of that up.
We’ll see…
From the comments:
Paulbots are the most absurd of all internet trolls.
Jimmy P’s hearing similar talk about Boehner holding the line; he hopes he’ll walk like Ronnie did at Reykjavik
http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2011/07/10/will-boehner-pull-a-reagan-at-reykjavik-and-walk-2/
He notes that earlier today there was talk of Boehner falling for the Obama gambit, but I hope that all of our calls and e-mails helped him, ahem, find his resolve.
Like I said, we’ll see tomorrow.
I read that, Bob. I have to admit, the tone deafness Boehner exhibits — I mean, why is he even negotiating right now? — astounds me.
If we’re saved somehow, it’ll be an accident.
Politicians can’t solve this: too many entrenched interests, most of them beyond the reach of the electorate.
Lesson? That the bigger the trough (federal spending), the more swine you attract.
West is just helping Jane’s head to explode more. Just a little nudge.
From WaPo:
If that’s true, geoff — and I hope it is — we have to get ready for the next prong of the attack: Obama will order social security and military paychecks withheld and, with the media, blame the pain on the Republicans.
At which point the GOP — and all of us — need to be front and center asking why social security and military pay is being withheld while the government is still funding, say, NPR, or Planned Parenthood, or increasing the size and scope of regulatory agencies like the EPA, which has grown 25% over the last year or so? Why are they trying to build high speed rail? Why are they funding cowboy poetry festivals, and giving ethanol subsidies?
In short, why is the President choosing blackmail Americans into getting permission to spend even more money we don’t have?
“while the government is still funding, say, NPR, or Planned Parenthood, ”
we could halve baracky’s cabinet and no one would notice.
JeffG and geoffb,
I have to agree. After the dismal NFP jobs report this week and the rapidly approaching alleged D-day for the debt ceiling, I don’t understand why Boehner didn’t just keep repeating that tax cuts would be bad for a struggling economy, and that it was time for the government to do what everyone has to do in hard times; cut their expenditures…
I can’t see any method here, and am really starting to wonder about Boehner’s savvy and intelligence.
At this point, would it be such a dismay to find out that your hot date had a surprise pair of balls?
Actually, that would be an excellent tack to take JeffG. Liken it to local government extortion; the kind that used to go on every couple of years in Maryland when I lived there.
They’d talk about needing to raise taxes. The folks would object, and the first thing the phony politicians would talk about was how police, firefighters, and first responders would have to be laid off-instead of social workers and such.
People are hip to that jive, and would understand it even on a national scale.
Not so sure what they are going to do as the WaPo seems to think they will go back to a Biden group proposal which all in all leaves me confused because of this:
Now that is 3.3 trillion or so of which 1.3T is taxes.
This sounds like the 2 trillion one which doesn’t have tax increases (as such)in it but 2 trillion in cuts not from entitlements. Still not good enough by far but it will not raise taxes. What they need but Obama and the Senate will never do is to cut both spending and tax rates to kick start the economy the growth of which is the only way to get past this mess.
It’s going to take an election to get this straightened out.
Heh.
(Yes, I’m late again. For #20.)
I’m taking that in a broad sense. So, yep.
That Boehner even accepts the terms, “closing tax loopholes,” is enough to drive me to despair. The presupposition is that “loopholes” exist for people to take more of the government’s money — and Boehner is tacitly agreeing by entertaining such “loophole” closures.
Want to close real tax loopholes? A flat or fair tax. Done.
I’m feeling outgunned, of a sudden.
I meant it in a very broad, broad sense.
Or are you turning Japanese on me.
“Want to close real tax loopholes? A flat or fair tax. Done.”
cuts down on the number of lobbyists too. hmmm shrink fed gov’t reduce the number of lobbyist. demonrats what say you?
link
Hennessey is the goto guy for the straight up as it comes to light. And right now, after his heads up on gaming the baseline and the pseudo-cuts piece and dissection of the “balance” meme, he’s got nothing much new that I can see.
Yeah, idiots like the WaPo headline writers can’t be bothered to count the opportunities lost when Obama adds spending to the debt over two years, plays for time with his commission to be ignored when it delivers a proposal, wastes the people’s time with his Obamaian StateoftheNation drivel, piles on top of that a worthless budget proposal only to abandon it a few months later for a speech! A Speech! No. No opportunities lost there, no time utterly unrecoverable there. Fuck.
Balz:
Hennessey:
Repeating from the Palin thread.
Stupid been around DC for a long time.
[…] at Powerline has more, Jeff at Protein Wisdom may have put his third party talk on hold for the moment. For the […]
Let me get this straight … Our 10 year debt should currently be around 15,000,000,000,000. They have a plan to cut it to around 13,000,000,000,000, and we are supposed to be excited, given the accounting gimmicks and base jackasshattery involved?
Nah, that would be the best possible case scenario, JD.
They’re only talking about reducing our ten year deficit by 2 or 4 trillion. The cumulative debt in that scenario would simply increase a little bit less drastically.
Ah, yes. I interchanged the words there. At any rate’ the debt will increase, at least, by $13,000,000,000,000. Yippee. Fuck them.
Or, in other terms, we have annual deficits in the range of $1,500,000,000,000. This deal would cut those annual deficits by about $200,000,000,000, leaving annual deficits around $1,300,000,000,000. Yippee.
Don’t know what our yearly deficit is now but I blindly thumbnail it around $1.5 trillion. If they cut $2T to $4T over 10 years we’d match that up against a static $15T in new deficit spending over that period.
I’m a bit late again. But, yeah, you’re right. Those are the rough ballpark figures, JD
the losers who don’t want to cut massively spending are the enemy.
“Long-range spending cuts” usually means nada next year, a few billion in a few years, and Herculean cuts out a decade or so where they’ll be killed before we get that far down the road.
A-fucking-men, Slartibartfast.
I hope the orange cry baby knows that we won’t buy into that bullshit this time, guys.
Cut it this budget year or it doesn’t mean shit.
cutting up baracky’s credit cards should be as easy as saying: chop chop
I think it’s about time Boner and the rest of his GOP “stalwarts” retire to spend more time with their families. Let the new blood take over.
link
“As we approach 2012, there are important lessons we can learn from all of this. First, we should never entrust the White House to a far-left ideologue who has no appreciation or even understanding of the free market and limited government principles that made this country economically strong. Second, the office of the presidency is too important for on-the-job training. It requires a strong chief executive who has been entrusted with real authority in the past and has achieved a proven track record of positive measurable accomplishments. Leaders are expected to give good speeches, but leadership is so much more than oratory. Real leadership requires deeds even more than words. It means taking on the problems no one else wants to tackle. It means providing vision and guidance, inspiring people to action, bringing everyone to the table, and with a servant’s heart dedicating oneself to striking agreements that keep faith with our Constitution and with the ordinary citizens who entrusted you with power. It means bucking the status quo, fighting the corrupt powers that be, serving the common good, and leaving the country better than you found it. Most of us don’t see a lot of that real leadership in D.C., and it’s profoundly disappointing.”
snow hoochie bloviating
and with a servant’s heart dedicating oneself to striking agreements that keep faith with our Constitution and with the ordinary citizens who entrusted you with power.
Damned Godbotherer.
You know what, bh? I found out yesterday that ceiling cat is really wall cat.
Will the disillusion never stop?
I don’t want them to cut the budget, I want them to eliminate entire departments; otherwise, all they’re doing is mowing off the tops of the weeds, and they’ll just grow back.
Yank ’em up by the root or blast ’em with Round Up. No other way to be sure.
x10. x100. Times infinity. NONE of it shall stand if we expect to NOT go down as the next collective disaster, the next tyranny. How in the hell do we expect to go on living in a land whose standard of living approaches the middle of the pack AND owes two hundred odd TRILLION in debt and obligation (including the states) and call ourselves free, represented, and constitutional?
WE DO NOT OWE ONLY $15T, FOLKS. WE SHOULDN’T CARE WHAT THE ANNUAL DEFICIT IS.
You know what? The right is utterly unserious. Not only has the right lost the messaging game and wholly botched the optics for an eternity, it can’t even do the fucking math. I haven’t been this mad in months.
1. The fucking deficit isn’t the problem, people. It’s the national debt AND the unfunded obligations. Why in heaven do we continue to talk in terms of an annual shortfall when we’re drowning in standing debt that sucks half a trillion dollars out of the economy IN INTEREST ALONE a year?!
2. Since when does a monetary cabal — the private corporation called the Federal Reserve with the largest federal policy control in the world and NO represented, voter oversight — which is connected at the hip to the US Treasury to enact more Keynesian, anti-classical liberal conflict of interest than you can count keep getting a pass on the right? What, are we stupid?
3. Why do we continue to tolerate the personal income tax?!
4. Why do we continue to promote low taxes for corporate America, given that crony capitalism has percolated through the entire fiscal picture to become indistinguishable from federal policy?
5. Why do we continue to entertain their lobbies?
That the hell is WRONG with the right? Why do we prattle on about annual budgets and that Ogabe, you know, just doesn’t get it? HE GETS IT FINE, SARAH! Why do we think we should debate with these thieves and liars? Why do we have a dime’s worth of faith in anything that goes on in DC?
Wake THE HELL UP.
Why? Why? Why?
Cause the gummints gots the schools and we is most totally iggernat.
Shit, is Obama going to be able to golf today? He’s going to ruin his streak.
Huh, the President’s schedule lists nothing until 3 pm, which says he “arrives at the White House”.
Guess perhaps he is golfing this morning.
Huh, that’s weird. I had never heard about the federal debt and unfunded liabilities before.
Thanks for the wake up call.
Here, bh, near the bottom of the page.