******************
“CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: It’s not just a bad deal, this is really an insulting deal. What Geithner offered, what you showed on the screen, Robert E. Lee was offered easier terms at Appomattox, and he lost the Civil War. The Democrats won by 3% of the vote and they did not hold the House, Republicans won the house. So this is not exactly unconditional surrender, but that is what the administration is asking of the Republicans.
This idea — there are not only no cuts in this, there’s an increase in spending with a new stimulus. I mean, this is almost unheard of. What do they expect? They obviously expect the Republicans will cave on everything. I think the Republicans ought to simply walk away. The president is the president. He’s the leader. They are demanding that the Republicans explain all the cuts that they want to make.
We had that movie a year-and-a-half ago where Paul Ryan presented a budget, a serious real budget with real cuts. Obama was supposed to gave speech where he would respond with a counter offer. And what did he do? He gave a speech where he had Ryan sitting in the front row. He called the Ryan proposal un-American, insulted him, offered nothing, and ran on Mediscare in the next 18 months.
And they expect the Republicans are going to do this again? The Republicans are going to walk on this. And I think they have leverage. Yes, for Congressional Democrats it will help them in the future if Republicans absorb the blame because we will have a recession. But Obama is not running again unlike the Congressional Democrats. He’s going to have a recession, 9% unemployment, 2 million more unemployed, and a second term that’s going to be a ruin. That is not a good proposition if you are Barack Obama.”
**********
If the Republicans walk away, and if the present monetary trainwreck cannot be held at current levels, and if no new monetary shenanigans can be arranged, then the markets will chase down by half.
And who will be blamed?
The answer to that is how this game of chicken will play out.
And won. Let’s not forget that part.
Obama can do whatever the fuck he wants now and he knows it.
It’s heartening to know that McConnell laughed in Geithner’s ferret face.
candy crowley is a fat whore
Obama can do whatever the fuck he wants now and he knows it.
Then let him and give him no cover.
The “rob Peter and give to ME” crowd who voted him in needs to be presented the bill. No more maxing the credit card so my grandkids are stuck with the consequences.
He’s such a fucking asshole.
The Rebubicans are not going to walk.
1. I agree with StrangernFiction.
2. Darleen, giving or not giving Obama “cover” isn’t up to you & me. It’s up to the State Media, just as it always is. Not giving him cover assumes one of two things:
(a) that the SM and Dems can’t come up with excuses & ways to blame Republicans, OR;
(b) that people (generally) won’t believe the SM and Dems … regardless of how dishonest, distorted, and convoluted their excuses & blame are.
3. This last is one of the reasons that, smart and decent has he may be, I think Krauthammer is ultimately clueless:
“But Obama is not running again unlike the Congressional Democrats. He’s going to have a recession, 9% unemployment, 2 million more unemployed, and a second term that’s going to be a ruin. That is not a good proposition if you are Barack Obama.”
How, and why, is that not a “good proposition” for Obama? What assumptions does that statement depend on? Are they good assumptions?
“Mr. President, go to your room. And don’t come back until you’re ready to negotiate with the grown-ups like a grown-up.”
“Walking away” = a middle class tax increase and an asteroid strike to the military budget all laid at the feet of team R. Why? Because Obama just gets to say, “I’m holding my pen, ready to restore middle class tax cuts and funding our military the second the Republican’s stop holding everything hostage for the top 1%.”
So, you know, good luck with that. The best case scenario is that team R balks long enough to get the entire nation even more royally pissed at them (and provide a lot of fodder for 2014 elections), but ultimately caves.
So go stiffen their spine. They must not cave (yet).
Squid, is that something you wrote, or from somewhere else? If somewhere else, where? Do you have a link?
Who dat, Squid?
Slippy says walking away is a bad idea, which proves it’s the right thing to do.
Thanks, slippy.
Squid,
The same could be said for virtually every federal government agency.
O.k., SlipperySlope, I’m breaking my rule against direct contact with you (just this once).
In light of your comment:
“So, you know, good luck with that. The best case scenario is that team R balks long enough to get the entire nation even more royally pissed at them (and provide a lot of fodder for 2014 elections), but ultimately caves. “
I have to ask, “Who are you? And what have you done with the real SlipperySlope?”
Slipperydick (Thor, is that you?) is playing Concern Troll today, Yuri.
Yuri – no problem. We’ll consider this more of a one-time fling than a relationship.
In my comment, I’m rooting for Team R to ultimately lose, and lose in the most damaging way to themselves. I think that’s pretty consistent with me.
Mission accomplished.
Balanced approach = 1,600,000,000,000 in new taxes, 50,000,000,000 in new spending, unlimited debt ceilings, and vague promises to maybe cut something in the future.
Slipperytwatwaffle seems determined to prove how unserious and dishonest the left is.
It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new thread for slippy.
Jacking taxes on the top 2%, who the left hates and this appears to be their obsession, using static scoring and ignoring potential changes in behavior, would raise approx 89,000,000,000 annually, which is less than 7% of last year’s deficit.
Obama’s proposal is a joke. New spending in order to reduce the debt?
This is a new tack: this claim that the right thing to do is that which is most likely to win you some elections.
Sounds delightfully amoral.
Let’s try to spend our way out of bankruptcy. It worked so well with the stimulus.
How about the Dems pass a fucking budget?
New
spendinginvestment in order to reduce the debt?FTFY
Conservatives have long been blamed for every election loss.
The GOP now has to face the very thing they’ve done to conservatives for several elections cycles: No matter what the GOP does, they’ll take the blame.
Expect the GOP to cave, spin it as either a win or bipartisanship and then the GOP will be absolutely shocked when the Democrats and MSM go into overdrive, calling the GOP
wreckersobstructionists, because the GOP didn’t go far enough.It’s not amoral if the people winning elections are doing what’s best for the country and the people losing elections would be an unmitigated disaster if they had more power.
New spending in order to reduce the debt?
Keynesian economics taken to its absurd, but entirely logical conclusion.
It’s not amoral if the people winning elections are doing what’s best for the country
How did your head not assplode?
I don’t suppose that you are prepared to argue that “best” is something that has some objective heft to it.
And on what planet is that happening?
You can’t explode a vacuum.
…the people winning elections are doing what’s best for the country
I suppose spending the country into bankruptcy is “what’s best for the country” if you believe in Saul Alinsky’s idea to bring down the entire system in order to replace it with some sort of Marxist Utopia…
Oh noes, SS is using double reverse psychology! How can we hope to compete with that?
Do you want your team to win because you think they would be better? Do you have an objective measure?
Yep
Team D – Risk a major recession / depression if borrowing maxes out before the economy begins strong self-sustaining growth.
Team R – Force a recession / depression right now by slashing spending as though borrowing was no longer an option.
Answering a question with a question doesn’t play well, here.
Alas and alak, having a differing viewpoint doesn’t play well here, so why trifle about how it’s done?
Exactly. The entire system runs on falsity. Accepting this makes everything make sense. I remind you of the position Team R finds itself in. It’s not an attractive one, but like all things, tides turn. I’m beginning to think that OBarry’s rhetorical jig is just about up — or shall be in short order — and if/when no deal is struck, we can get on with the business of finally separating the American wheat from its riffraff.
Hope springs eternal.
so 1.) a tax hike on the 1% will cause the 1% to leave the country for a lovely spot in South America, no doubt. 2.) tax hike won’t pay off any of this debt anyway, 3.) the grinding poverty and unemployment will only get worse and another stimulus just drives us further into oblivion
then they seize the 401k. and we are all slaves of the state.
And yes, slope is making some sense today, albeit for entirely the wrong reasons. Which is fine, those reasons being a couple of generations behind the curve, thus confirming slope’s being itself perpetually behind the curve.
my inlaws barely survived the communist revolution in China. Everyone almost starved to death (a lot of them did). They were wandering the countryside, boiling the leaves off the trees to make them edible.
and this was just recently in the 1960’s. We are so completely fucked. But me and my kids won’t be starving, that’s for damn sure.
Oh, you can count on another stimulus. Actually, we’re running on a permanent one right now, one that doubles in January. Bet we didn’t know that.
Another stimulus just drives us further into oblivion but not without enriching Barry’s cronies. Of course a crash enriches them too because they’ll just short all you rubes with a dime still in the market.
Spending into oblivion guarantees the economy will not create “self-sustaining growth” anytime soon. Confiscating funds from the private sector to feed an ever-growing byzantine federal bureaucracy all but ensures a long-term economic depression. Keynesian economic policy failed 80 years ago and it’s failing now.
Let us not forget that every piece of the fiscal cliff puzzle was signed into law by Barack Obama. It’s all his. Let him own it.
Why would it start working now?
one must buy oneself a cluck or three if one is to be assured a supply of eggses in the dark days to come
and mind the foxes
Like I said, slope is making some sense. Re; the above, there’ll never be strong self-sustaining growth under the present monetary regime, slope. If you do not know this educate yourself.
Secondly, Team R should force a depression right now by slashing spending because borrowing already is no longer an option — The State has borrowed a quarter quadrillion already.
The remaining question is if this depression hits the dependent component of that State or if it’ll shielded by a whole new wave of insane monetary policy cum social spending. At which point everything else collapses and you know the rest.
Oh wait, we’re already doing that. Anyway, kindly educate yourself.
FIFY.
don’t believe me ask car in
Emperor Obama wants to make sure we don’t get coal in our stockings for Christmas. No, really. He actually just said that.
And it would be great if any Republican candidate laid that out, because when they run for office they tend to say happy shit like, “My number one focus will be jobs!” People don’t realize that they mean the elimination thereof. That slashing entitlement spending and laying off a few hundred thousand government workers is going to make it way worse before it gets better, but then we’ll be on a solid foundation for growth.
FWIW, I wish Democrats would be more honest about the fact that we’re rapidly using up the borrowing runway while we try to hit economic takeoff speed, and there’s no guarantee that the latter will happen before the former is exhausted.
But (IMHO), those are the choices we actually face, but apparently politicians have decided that it might frighten the masses to tell them.
Force a recession / depression right now by slashing spending
The spending cuts are less than 1/13th of the deficit. To call that slashing is a lie.
having a differing viewpoint doesn’t play well here
Being a dishonest serial troll doesn’t pkay well here.
My number one focus will be jobs!” People don’t realize that they mean the elimination thereof.
Lie.
The header “Walk away or wither away” assumes a sort of “either do A or suffer B” proposition. We might want to consider a “do A and suffer B” proposition, although these two things A and B aren’t actually causally related save at some distant marginal remove.
Republicans of course, aren’t gladly considering their probable collapse as a party, thinking they can simply go on with business as usual; thinking solely of means while constantly behind a curve of change set by others; never considering ends set by the original republican political order. Making the sort of fundamental changes to their own outlook which only might result in their future relevance is a diminishingly small possibility, receding just as rapidly as they fail to grasp the circumstances in which they find themselves and the nation they make poor show to steward. Which isn’t to say they’re responsible for those things which the progressive left chooses to do, choices at the root of the difficulties the nation faces, but are responsible for the weak views they offer in opposition.
Krauthammer and Limbaugh are speaking the same language, but they’re on two completely different pages from each other.
Personally, I don’t see how either option gets the GOP out of getting buggered up the scape by the goat.
I really can’t listen to Obama lie to us anymore.
From Ernst’s link:
Heh.
I don’t get how the Republicans can be blamed for what happens now. The dems are in control, Obama won. What happened to “the buck stops here”?
OK, that was all rhetorical.
Slippy wants us to believe resistance is useless. I wonder why that might be?
it’s breathtakingly irresponsible for team rape baby to even momentarily contemplate walking away from those admittedly paltry spending cuts what the sequestration promises
what individual Rs might contemplate, should they be anticipating the fearsome consequences of Difficult Choices, is the ease with which it could put a new face on their disreputable little club by dismissing the mcconnell and the boehner and the priebus
Leigh, I have long since been hitting the mute button when they show an Obama clip on Special Report on FauxNewz. I refuse to listen to him.
It doesn’t matter, Lee. The Republicans will still get blamed.
Our Democrat president is a fucking idiot who can’t speak proper english, e.g., ‘kids’, ‘folks’, ‘gotta’, ‘hafta’. Argh. He’s still campaigning and now, referring to himself as Santa Claus while speechifying at a toy factory.
It’s time for the AF1 pilot to take one for the team on the voyage to Hawaii.
I hear ya, cranky. It beats telling the teevee to STFU multiple times in a newscast.
I think the House GOP members should vote present, just like our president did, and leave it at that. Also, I agree with hf that getting rid of boner and company would be a great gesture, but they aren’t going anywhere.
I’ve been advocating that, as well cranky.
“And it would be great if any Republican candidate laid that out, because when they run for office they tend to say happy shit like, “My number one focus will be jobs!” People don’t realize that they mean the elimination thereof.”
Yeah tool. ‘Cause your guy with four years and two of them unopposed is great with creating jobs. Except the truth is he’s awful and his regulations, taxes, and Obamacare have cost tons of jobs all while telling people he wants to create jobs. He’s a liar and you’re an uninformed gullible sucker who enables his lying. This economy sucks because Obama and Reid suck. Pelosi sucks too but nobody cares anymore since she’s minority leader.
Having a stupid, ignorant, and obviously dishonest viewpoint promulgated smugly doesn’t play well here. Too bad for slippery.
Yet you guys see that getting rid of any set of feckless leadership on account of its fecklessness only to replace it with another set of feckless leaders is stupid on the one hand, and isn’t the point on the other. Which is where the motivating principle would arise again: why you get there matters, right along with how you get there. If they’re to find their lack, the Republican party has a heap of novel (to themselves novel, that is) thinking to do. That they’ve already had the opportunity to have cause to undertake that thinking and chose instead to avoid it, re-electing the feckless leadership they’ve already got, tells the tale.
I expect our politicians to lie to us. It’s like breathing to them. I do, however, expect them to know what the fuck they are doing and to lead, follow or get out of the way.
You can take any Obama speech he’s made in his entire public career and parse it for key words. He never says anything substantive. It’s word salad and waffle words. He’s a fucking idiot and I don’t believe he didn’t get a pass for Harvard, et al because his mysterious benefactor endowed the Universities he attended.
We’ve been played. Big time. It’s a cosmic nightmare and I want us to wake up.
In five years a lot of us will be saying “Remember iphones ? Heh. “
I’m waiting for someone in the leadership (ha!) to decide to placate us all with cheap booze and cheaper smokes.
And then refuse to treat us at the now decrepit and understaffed hospitals.
Just for laughs.
I’m about one rape baby reference away from taking an extended vacation from PW. I can’t take the miserable prick anymore (I’d trade happyfeet for five slipperyslopes), and the ones that humor him are getting on my nerves too. I prolly need a vacation…
they kinda owe us a signal that they comprehend their own loathsomeness and inadequacy
that’s all
just throw us a boner
Oh i forgot in telling the tale of my inlaws survival of the Chinese communist revolution:
my MIL belonged to a “wealthy” family because they owned a silk mill. They made cloth. They were considered “the 1%”. Everything they had was confiscated. They were humiliated in public – my MIL was forced to crawl around a school’s track on her hands and knees . Because they were once land owners. The filthy filthy business people!!
Again: this was the 1960’s. And soon after that they were ALL starving.
By then we’ll be enjoying the latest version of the ObamaPhone: two tin cans and a string.
I hear ya. “Rape baby” is about as despicable a term as I’ve ever read in the comments here, and that includes thor’s verbal vomit.
Tell me jeez I’ve had it up to here with rape baby babblings but what can you do? You can’t muzzle the whole party
missfixit, the story of your inlaws matches the story told in “Escape from Red China.”
Did your inlaws buy their way out using a state sponsored “escape” program?
LBascom, if you’re not on edge, you’ve not been paying attention. I know I’m on edge.
Missfixit, that’s horrible. Have you ever read Wild Swans? It’s a true story about three generations of Chinese women (grandma, mom, daughter) from the time of the Warlords to The Great Leap Forward to the Red Brigade (guard? I can’t remmber).
It’s awful and fascinating and a cautionary tale.
I haven’t read Escape from Red China – just listening to my MIL talk about it…from what I understand, the way they escaped was my FIL was a professor of literature, and he got a temporary visa to a university here in the US. He managed to rbing his wife and (my ex husband) over with him. While they were here they got lucky, the Tiananmen Square massacre happened, and the elder Bush granted the Chinese currently here in the US some sort of shelter to stay…
after that, my FIL was forced to return to CHina and was never allowed back. He died there. My MIL somehow got herself enrolled in a college masters program here, and kept herself and her son in the US long enough for them to gain citizenship.
It’s a story with some holes in it – I couldn’t understand the whole thing because I don’t speak Chinese and her English is bad, and now that we are divorced (that One Child policy has produced some scary abusive men, I will add) – I don’t know every particular.
I don’t even want to know. It sounds like it was hell on earth. My MIL’s brother was thrown in the gulag and died there as well.
That’s pretty much what I understand Rush to be advocating. As a matter of parliamentary procedure, I’m not entirely sure how it would work in practice without some kind of Republican fingerprint on it. As a matter of practical politics and electioneering, e.g., this isn’t going to work, we know it’s not going to work, and we refuse to play along, but the only way we have to prove it’s not going to work is to go along with it –so we vote “present,” that’s going to be a really hard sell to the electorate come 2014.
I don’t think the choice is between walking away and withering away. The choice is how to die: waste away or self-immolation.
i.e. I don’t know how to avoid losing everything in 2014. The only question is will it be in such a way that maybe we come roaring back in 2016, or are we looking at another generation —at a minimum— in the minority?
I think that’s true for both the (not-so) Grand (sure-looking) Old Party and the conservative movement, such as it is these days.
Hey, Ladies! happyfeet thinks you should all be dead.
Pelosi is blathering on FauxNewz. I have the sound muted but the chryon says “Obama made it clear he supported tax cut for middle class”.
Clear as mud.
Crazy bitches being all happy to be alive. Cumsluts!
That’s not news, Pablo. Happy is afeared of the wimminz because we are mighty.
And we won’t date him.
Doesn’t it make you look like a douche to criticize it incessantly and then turn around and do it yourself? Or are you hoping that (a) no one wil notice, or (b) the electorate will get the nuance (as framed by the MSM).
Well, you could stop babbling, were you capable. But since freedom is more important than liberty, it seems to me your choice is rather obvious. Kneel before Xerxes Obymandias and receive from his bounty everything you ever desired.
Fucking idiot.
Your convenientely forgetting one thing sloppy —he won.
I kind of like the fact that when we get all riled at HF, slippy can’t get anybody’s attention.
anyway the whole point is that when the 1%ers get marched off to the gulag and their wealth is finally confiscated, is the time we need to start sharpening our cooking skills re: trees and their leaves.
an interesting difference between past commie revolutions and the modern collapse of the west: in the past you were considered uber-rich if you owned some technology that was not available to the masses. Like, say, a camera in China in 1960.
Now though….every ghetto lounger with an EBT account has an iphone – so what is it that clearly marks the 1%ers? Owning stock? Owning any kind of business with employees? it’s not home ownership…
Leigh, take a deep breath and don’t make the mistake of wishing for anyone’s death as a solution. It won’t be and once that is seen as a solution things get even uglier faster than you can imagine.
charlesaustin, I don’t think we can avoid violence. At some point, government is going to try and shut down a business and the business is going to tell government to go eff themselves.
Not dating happy is wishing for his death?
It was a metaphorical death I’m wishing for him, charles. A French Revolution we don’t need.
It’ll do my black little heart good to see him mocked in history books for generations.
Math.
Are you still here? Aren’t you due at the Quik Trip for the afternoon shift?
Only if you force them to wear a badge indicating their income.
“Doesn’t it make you look like a douche to criticize it incessantly and then turn around and do it yourself? Or are you hoping that (a) no one wil notice, or (b) the electorate will get the nuance (as framed by the MSM).
How is giving someone a taste of their own medicine being douchey? a.) No will notice. No one is paying any attention. That is how your dope kept power prattling about trivia. b.) The MSM framing seems good for about six weeks tops. Often much less. They aren’t trusted (polls show it) anyway. What are you worried about? Isn’t this supposed to be a victory no matter what for you? Let’s ride it out. When people don’t get their free stuff they’ll be pissed. The question is, WHO will the be pissed at?
“Math.”
Dumb snark.
Nobody is suggesting that Republicans should vote “present” on absolutely everything but letting newborns die, silly. Just on the one thing.
[…] nits with Charles Krauthammer: a messaging plan that CAN work TweetDarleen points to Krauthammer’s advice to the GOP (mirroring the more sternly-worded advice offered here ever […]
No more “team rape baby” happy. It’s evidently offensive to a number of people here, and your using it as a constant refrain I can only take to mean you are trying to hurt my readership and drive people away. Which means you are actively trying to harm me.
Stop it.
Ok it’s your call
Thank you, Jeff.
I can’t help but think though if Team R had the same durable and staunch litmus test on fiscal responsibility as it has on the issues pertaining to other people’s fetuses our little country would be noticeably better off than it is
and that thought elicits a sorrowful sigh from me
There is no “Team R” litmus test on abortion. There should be one on fiscal responsibility though.
While you’re dropping “team rape baby” maybe you could drop abortion entirely. That would be nice.
I don’t think it’s fair to ignore socon issues entirely Mr cranky
The tent being as vast as it is and all
It’s even less fair to mischaractrize them to demonize people, happyfeet. We all know your views on abortion and SSM. Hell, my dog knows your views on abortion and SSM, and she rolls her eyes every time you bring them up.
I was referring to Leigh’s 11:04 comment to anyone that cares.
you have an impudent dog
Takes one to know one!
It wasn’t the social cons who got sidetracked by a non-issue. It was the people who insisted on making the issue THE issue when they demanded certain candidates get out of the race lest they cause distraction, distracting themselves in the process.
Interestingly (or not) most of those people were the ones who before the election insisted the issue shouldn’t be an issue, because of the grave seriousness of teh economic suck. Yet when the issue came up, they couldn’t treat it like the non-issue they all insisted it was.
I guess social liberalism trumps fiscal conservatism every time.
Which, not coincidentally, is why social liberalism is a poor indicator of fiscal conservatism.
let’s nominate a fiscally conservative pro-choice R and find out
“let’s nominate a fiscally conservative pro-choice R and find out”
Nah. I’ll let you have all the failure to yourself.
please?
sarah palin 2016!
We have had two that I’m aware of off the top of my head. Gerald R. Ford and Mitt Romney.
Sure, Romney flipped, but does anyone seriously believe he wasn’t going to flop?
And then there’s famous Clownifornia soc-lib/fisc-con, Ahnuld. How’d that work out?
Romney was a weirdo that very few normal americans could relate to.
Arnold is worse than Petraeus (sp?) with the whorebanging
I wonder if he’s being a good dad to that kid
He has that in common with the previous two Presidential nominees to come out of Taxachussets.
Funny how social liberals need a liberal society, isn’t it?
Yeah I think we can safely cross that state off the list.
Florida too I don’t like this Bush guy or that weaselly Rubio guy neither
also New Jersey
“Romney was a weirdo that very few normal americans could relate to.”
That’s pretty much already covered under ” a fiscally conservative pro-choice R”.
I could but ask for hf to drop the abortion thing. I guess it’s all he has.