Which, after pleasantries and seating, is about 5 minutes longer than is necessary to say, “forget our agreement. I want tax hikes. And if I don’t get them, I’m going to blame the Republicans for what we all know is going to be a very shitty set of economic numbers. I’ll call my plan a balanced approach. The public eats that bullshit up with sprinkles. Then I’ll call you extremists, who are most likely racist. And you, Speaker Boehner, will weep like a virgin who just got fingered for the first time on prom night.” Washington Times:
Never let it be said that President Obama has failed to spend time with Republican leaders in seeking an alternative to automatic budget cuts that are due to hit most federal departments Friday. On Wednesday, for example, the president gave GOP lawmakers as much as seven minutes, a rare face-to-face encounter that the White House described as a “meeting.”
The White House’s characterization of this momentary huddle at the Capitol as a meeting illuminates Mr. Obama’s strategy in dealing with Republicans on the budget cuts and other fiscal deadlines.
With speeches and other staged events, the president has tried to build public pressure for his agenda of tax increases coupled with spending cuts.
But he has made little time for negotiating directly with lawmakers who oppose his plans.
“It is a sincere conviction among Republicans that the president’s negotiating posture isn’t about getting a deal done, it’s a zero-sum political game where his aim is to destroy the Republican [House] majority in the next election,” said Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist who served in 2008 as Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign manager. “It’s certainly not an effective strategy for a leader in search of a deal.”
The President was of course scheduled to meet with lawmakers today — after the sequester began — creating perhaps his busiest week in years. The results of the (staged, contrived, disingenuous, purely political) meeting? Well, does a communist wear a big fury hat…?
From John R, here’s a graphic breakdown of Obama’s leadership:
Seven minutes is plenty of time for Boehner to fill his Depends and get a clean pair on.
I’ve seen that pie chart before. Isn’t that the federal budget with the sequester replaced by “meeting with republicans” or is even the sequester much bigger that meeting with Republicans in real life?
Problems, problems.
“I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it again.”
But don’t worry. Obama is not a dictator.
even Peggy Noonan is disappointed in food stamp
she says that as his presidency has progressed he’s become a strange and nihilistic fascist cocksucker, and that this is new. Where will this journey end she wonders. And she sighs and wonders how Rosalita makes that refreshing mate. She believes there’s a special implement involved, but where it’s kept she could not begin to guess. In the kitchen somewhere. And she sighs again for the hopelessness of it all.
Peggy hints in her column yesterday that Jugears isn’t up to the job and that perhaps he’s been loafing and leading us down the garden path.
I wonder if Peggy fell and bumped her head really hard about 10 years ago.
““I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it again.” – See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=47701#comment-962179”
Ultimately, those words got a lot of storm troopers shot.
It begins: The AP mocks the Won.
I’m embarrassingly delighted my early morning, snarky graphic somehow managed to pass the rigorous PW editorial standards. Of course, it doesn’t make the country’s situation any better. But it makes ME feel better….and that’s really all that matters. Plus, you know, PIE! Thanks, Jeff.
Dr. Krauthammer brings it:
If it walks like Cloward-Piven, and talks like Cloward-Piven…
from here
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-hail-armageddon/2013/02/28/ca8a32a6-81da-11e2-b99e-6baf4ebe42df_story.html
Let’s see.
If you have 50 employees and you have to cut 2% that means you only have 49 left. But that 50th person being let go is going to cause massive delays and problems? These from organization that are staffed at twice the level they need to be staffed at because of government/union incest and do to be funded more generously into the foreseeable future.
As has been stated ad infinitum these cuts are being implemented in an order only a psychopath trying to maintain his political fiefdom would countenance. It would be like us saying that in the face of budget cuts that we were going to scrimp on food or the kids well being to make sure that we could go to the movies or buy crack or new vibrator or the like.
We are dealing with dishonest interlocutors. But everyone here knows that.