Official Washington bows before Obama's middle-class death panel
No, I'm not being hyperbolic or ironic with that headline. The prez set up a bipartisan commission of unelected rich guys who have taken it upon themselves to tell us we must both pay higher taxes and accept fewer services. And unsurprisingly, much of Official Washington thinks this is an ingenious idea because everyone in America hates it.
And what's worse, it's inspired creepy authoritarians like Kevin Huffman to declare that commission co-chairs Bowles and Simpson should "go rogue" if the people whom we elected to represent us don't go through with their plans:
Debt commission co-chairs should go rogue
By Kevin Huffman
The chairmen of the president's debt commission should keep on pushing, and threaten to go rogue, if needed. Their proposal Wednesday went down like a lead zeppelin. Their own commission members pussy-footed away from it; the president's knees showed early signs of buckling. And raise your hand if you were stunned when Nancy Pelosi disavowed it for cutting benefits and Grover Norquist slammed it for raising taxes? Well, at least they are consistent in their cowardice.
It probably didn't help that Bowles and Simpson released their paper the same day British students took to the streets in violent protests over Prime Minister David Cameron's austerity measures. You could imagine Republican strategists watching TV and thinking to themselves, "When we said 'Tea Party' we meant the peaceful kind."
[...]
This is precisely why the commission is not an effort to build bipartisan congressional consensus.
Which brings me to the rogue part of the operation. Bowles and Simpson surely released their thoughts because they can't get 14 commissioners to support them and because they certainly can't get either party on board. If they feel strongly about the deficit, they should go totally independent, get some private funding, and engage in the 2012 elections. Demand a balanced budget plan from every national candidate. Release an independent report card of what the deficit will look like for each plan (and run TV ads showing, e.g., "Sarah Palin's deficit reduction plan: F.") And in case anyone needs a real wakeup call, play some footsie with Mike Bloomberg if and when he gets bored in New York.
Ah yes, let's draft Mike Bloomberg, the ultimate fantasy candidate for rich people who hate Social Security and Medicare!
Also: It isn't "cowardice" to be an elected representative and oppose something that your constituents will absolutely hate, especially when it was concocted by two jerks who haven't held elected office in God knows how long. The Bowles/Simpson "plan" is basically a compromise where they agree to kick the American people in both the nuts and the teeth equally rather than focusing exclusively on one or the other. It's a plan so politically toxic that anyone who votes for it will not only be driven from office but also likely kidnapped, strapped to a rocket ship and fired into the sun. It's that freaking bad.
In a way, I find it comforting that so many of our elected representatives are giving this toxic piece of trash a "HAAAAAAAAIIIIIILL NO!" It shows that they're still responsive somewhat to public pressure and that our country hasn't yet become a feudal state run by unelected commissioners. Here's to the little pleasures in life, eh?
Just watch the gutless Democrats bow and scrape before this great scam.
Thanks again Obama for creating a vehichle to for the reactionaries in America to obtain their unpopular policy objectives and for fucking over the working and middle class of this country in ways we could never have imagined!
for making all of this possible.
I'm totally disgusted that Alan Simpson is on this board. A rich old man close to end of life, and who has no need for programs he suggests get eliminated or cut back, does not belong on it. Yes, I'm disgusted by Simpson, but also by Obama for appointing him.
The Republicans and or Teabaggers didn't create the disillusionment of Democrats; the Obama, Biden, Emanuel, Gibbs, Summers, Geithner WHITE HOUSE DID!
The ARROGANT STUPIDITY of taking liberals and progressives for granted was immeasurably DESTRUCTIVE!
The abandonment of Howard Dean was TREACHEROUS and SELF-DEFEATING! How many new Democrats did Tim Kaine and Rahm Emanuel get elected?
The mishandling of the health care reform bill was a smoke and mirrors face-saving public relations catastrophe!
Openly and repeatedly criticizing the "professional left" was political FRATRICIDE. It made liberals and progressives FEEL BETRAYED!
Negotiating with Republicans, Blue Dogs, the religious right and perpetuating Bush's wars, legal battles, secrecy and corporate protectionism and or favoritism, while the working class was losing their jobs and their homes, made traditional Democrats feel HOPELESSLY FORSAKEN!
Who was the Obama White House’s political advisor……Karl Rove?
Democrats should have blown the looney tunes GOP away, but due to the repeated POLITICAL miscalculations of the selectively deaf and dumb Obama White House, the looney tunes GOP is staging what should have been an IMPOSSIBLE comeback. This should never have happened. To deny that the Obama White House created and or enabled it is every bit as self-delusional as today’s Teabaggers believing that Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachmann, Sean Hannity and Jim DeMint are selfless humble servants of “we the people”.
Decades to achieve a political success of the enormity of the 2010 election. SQUANDERED!
Candideinnc
My sentiments and feelings mirror yours. Very disappointed with all the cave-ins, rollovers and capitulations to a very bad group of GOP leaders.
Not on the rug, man.
Gee...maybe people shouldn't have voted to put the same people back in,huh.
Be glad they're all back in..otherwise...things could be worse!
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
What's that definition of 'insanity' again?
Government + the Federal Reserve = organized crime
You're nuts
But cool?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
If a man can be known by the company he keeps, then it is entirely possible (nay, likely) that "our Hope & Change" President Obama is not the
leaderman that we thought we were voting for.Each and every major piece of legislation that Obama has signed has the finger-prints of the Crony Corporatists or their minions (conservative think-tanks & lobbyists) all over them. Everything else has been the equivalent of "crumbs from the table", from the meme of "let them eat cake". Unfortunately, that table wasn't big enough for Single Payer or Medicare For All, or for impeachment and/or prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In fact, that table hasn't been big enough to properly investigate the Wall Street Mobster contrived economic meltdown of September 2008. Instead, "our" politicians (and Fed Reserve) have merely papered over the gaping economic hemorrhage with "monopoly money" -- creating an even larger problem "can" that has been kicked a ways down the road. Obama's NeoCon "Cat Food Commission" has offered solutions that are not real bona fide solutions -- just more of the same, but with the largest impact thrust upon those people least able to bear the pain. How typical ...
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
-- John F. Kennedy
or, in more modern parlance, tax cuts and deficit reduction.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
I thought it was crocuses
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSnLU9nyFSA
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
is that these people don't vote for what's good for their constituents, or the country, but what's good for them personally. The Bush tax cuts: bad for the country. But Senator X is rich and will benefit, so it's good for him, therefore good for the country. High Speed Rail: can be good for the country. Good for the environment, less traffic congestion, less dependence on oil. But Senator X isn't getting any lobbyist money for high speed rail. He does get money from Big Oil, therefore it is bad for the country
Unfortunately, the longer the deficit reduction is pushed around on the plate like a kid not wanting to eat his brocoli, the less "least painful" options we have.
The deficit is like that A&E show on Hoarders. The problem started out small, but now that the thing is this big we no longer want to look at it.
The deficit is a sham, as is the entire Reagan Revolution.
Look at the deficit numbers, disparity between wages...EVERY measure that is out of kilter today...look at those numbers prior to 1980. Look at the US standard of living...education...ALL OF IT.
Everything was better...and these were the terrible times wrought by horrible progressive policies...all that nasty regulation...all that "the government is bad for you" bullshit that was used as justification for the destruction wrought by the policies and agenda of that frog faced mother fucker and his minions.
If there really is an afterlife, I hope he roasts...painfully...for all eternity.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
I'd also like the $200 I have donated to his 2008 campaign. We have been taken for a bunch of suckers. We need to find a serious Progressive candidate to primary his corporate ass. I'd love to see this ----------------->Grayson/Feigngold 2012!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny" - Thomas Jefferson
He didn't lose his re-election.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
The Dems let him stay, cause he keeps his mouth shut and provides comic relief with his UFO stories.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
for that unfair attribution of some Shirley McLain rant to Dennis during the debate. He denied the charge. He is still around. Russert is not.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
One word. RELIGION.
Keep your religion to yourself. I hate when people mix politics and their religious ideology when forming legislation.
"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny" - Thomas Jefferson
"If they feel strongly about the deficit, they should go totally independent, get some private funding..."
...and pay off the debt and defecit.
Now, THAT would be going rogue!
You are acting just like a teabagger.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
Of course a group of wealthy white men are going to recommend cuts from the bottom up. Such cuts do not affect them and their peers. The Dems will fold as they always do, as they care in principle, but not enough to help us out. It will be up to us to revolt.
Not on the rug, man.
And it's doing just that. Thanks, Obama.
It's the same MSM village praising this commission today that was declaring the economy sound in the summer of 2009. The same village which failed to see the huge problems with the banks and mortgages, and which is still foolishly pretending that recovery is right around the corner. They have very little competence and zero ability for self-reflection, but that doesn't stop them from claiming to know what's best for the proles.
for fat-cat excesses.
The recession immediately after the end of the Viet Nam War; who paid for that? Certainly not the fat-cats...who told the rest of us to tighten our belts. I remember those long hard years, even though I was a kid in his teens, then. I remember what a stress it put on my parents and friends. I remember looking for a job to help out and finding 20 people in the line ahead of me. (Now, it's probably 70.)
Then we had Saint Ronnie of the Raygunz, telling us that we must engage in the spirit of 'volunteerism' - meaning the remainder of those working had to carry the weight of looking after the poor, the disadvantaged, etc. and don't bother Gub'mint, as it's too busy handing out expensive and useless weapons contracts to its' corp-rat friends in the middle of another recession and a stock market meltdown. The fat-cats told us to 'volunteer'...while they sat on their millions and didn't expend any of their precious capital in job-creation.
And here we go again. The same kind of scenario, only it's worse than ever before.
How many times do we have to be hit with a hammer before we realize who's swinging it?
It seems that 100% of the pain belongs to the poor and middle class. The rich get another big fat tax cut. What a joke.
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