Tag: politics

The House Republicans walk out when Obama refuses to accept their surrender:

President Barack Obama and congressional leaders are scrambling to find a way ahead on a debt deal after House Speaker John Boehner threw negotiations into crisis by walking out less than two weeks before the deadline to avoid a potentially catastrophic default.

A visibly frustrated Obama summoned Boehner, R-Ohio, to the White House for a Saturday morning meeting with the three other leaders – Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

“We have run out of time and they are going to have to explain to me how it is that we are going to avoid default” on Aug. 2, the president told reporters at a hastily scheduled news after Boehner’s announcement.

The media coverage of the debt ceiling issue has really been abysmal. There is absolutely no more threat of U.S. default in August than there was yesterday or than there is today. If Obama elects to default by deciding to pay for the occupation of Afghanistan or sending out Social Security checks instead of paying interest on the debt, it is no more unavoidable or necessary than a default by a private individual who decides to buy a new car instead of paying his mortgage and credit card bills.

There is a perfectly good case to be made for strategic default, especially considering how much U.S. debt is owed to its self-appointed enemy of the future, China. But it is a blatant and shameless lie to claim that a failure to reach an agreement on raising the debt ceiling, or even a budget, means that a default cannot be avoided.

It shouldn’t be hard to explain to Obama how to avoid a default. First, you collect tax revenues. Second, you pay the interest on the outstanding debts. Third, you pay for your various spending programs with whatever money you have left. Since interest was only $197 billion in 2010 and tax revenues were $2,162 billion, it is mathematically obvious that any default can only be an intentional and strategic one, the protestations of politicians notwithstanding.

Surely Lucy won’t pull the football away this time!

Republicans led by naïve supply-siders are preparing, for the third time in my life, to sell their souls on spending cuts in exchange for tax-rate reductions that are small, ineffective, and sure to be temporary. Ronald Reagan got his tax cuts, but he went to his grave waiting for those spending cuts. George W. Bush got his tax cuts, and ended his presidency with spending soaring and his entitlement-reform program in the garbage. And now certain Republicans are starting to slobber over the Gang of Six plan, because it reduces the top income-tax rate to 29 percent. Overall, the plan is supposed to be a tax increase — a $1.2 trillion one — but it sweetens the deal with rate cuts, and rate cuts turn Republicans into useless piles of goo.

The rate cuts, we are told, are “pro-growth.” Growth is the great magical unicorn that will deliver us from the burden of making hard decisions, we are promised.

But the important drivers of our deficit are entitlements, mainly centered on health care, the cost of which is growing at about three to four times the rate of GDP growth. We aren’t going to grow our way out of that problem — not at 2 percent, not at 5 percent. We’ll simply keep spending, pile up more debt, and have a debate like this again in a couple of years, if we’re lucky — or in a couple of weeks if we aren’t.

Nothing short of comprehensive reform of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security is going to stabilize our public finances. The Gang of Six deal contains only very vague language about “efficiency” in health-care spending, and it actually makes Social Security reform more difficult by introducing procedural barriers. It’s a terrible deal, and Republicans would be fools to take it.

As usual, the establishment Republicans are assuming that the threat of a SECOND OBAMA TERM will make 2012 THE MOSTEST IMPORTANTEST ELECTION EVAH and cause the rebellious Tea Party element to dutifully fall in line and vote them back into office. And they may well be right, again.

On the other hand, increasing numbers of Americans appear to be increasingly aware of the charade and of the irrelevance of the bi-factional game in comparison with the economic issues. If House Republicans are willing to raise the debt ceiling, then what difference does it make if the Magic Negro, Captain Underoos, or Al’s Pal happen to be seated in the Oval Office as the economy begins to deleverage?

I’m sure you’re nearly as surprised as I am to learn that the House Republicans not only caved on the debt ceiling, but caved in a preemptive manner:

A conservative proposal to raise the debt ceiling — known as “Cut, Cap and Balance” — passed the House with bipartisan support late Tuesday, by a vote of 234 to 190. Five Democrats (Boren, Cooper, Matheson, McIntyre and Schuler) voted with the majority, while nine Republicans (Bachmann, Broun, Canseco, DesJarlais, Griffith, Walter Jones, Mack, Paul and Rohrabacher) voted ‘no.’

What is this cunning plan, precisely?

“Under the “Cut, Cap, and Balance” legislation, Congress would raise the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion (the amount requested by President Obama to get him through the 2012 election). However, that increase would go into effect only if both houses of Congress pass — with two-thirds majorities — a balanced-budget amendment (BBA) to the Constitution and send it to the states for ratification. In addition, the plan calls for significant spending cuts to next year’s budget — about $111 billion — and firm caps on federal spending at 18.5 percent of GDP by the end of the decade. According to White House data, given current trends, spending will exceed 25 percent of GDP this year and will hover around 22.5 percent for the next five years. (The legislation will make no immediate changes to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security.)”

Significant spending cuts? $111 billion is about 7 percent of the 2011 deficit. Spending needs to be reduced to 18.5 percent of GDP or less now, not ten years from now. This is a craven and abject collapse on the part of the House Republicans and Bachmann’s vote against it shows that they know this to be the case.

I did warn you that he was intellectually over-matched:

This guy is not longer a joke, he’s simply despicable. Chris Wallace asked Herman Cain about a mosque being built in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. After arguing that Islam doesn’t qualify as a religion or something under the 1st Amendment, they got to the heart of the matter.

“So Wallace asked the inevitable question: does any community have the right to ban mosques? “Yes, they have a right to do that,” Cain replied, without skipping a beat. He later added that, while he is not willing to discriminate based on religion, “I’d rather err on the side of caution.””

Cain has a rather convoluted understanding of the US Constitution, at least when it comes to it’s applicability to Muslims in this country. I didn’t like John McCain’s attempts to rewrite the 1st Amendment through campaign finance reform laws and I don’t like candidates for President like Cain who think some people may only build houses of worship at the sufferance of their fellow citizens.

I’m not saying that Cain’s instincts about the inevitable curtailment of religious freedoms aren’t on target, as there are real doubts about whether the concept of religious freedom can survive a large Islamic population any better than the right to bear arms survived the introduction of nuclear weapons. And there are certainly major problems with the way secular officials around the nation are violating the First Amendment in favor of Islam. Even so, to argue that Islam isn’t a religion is simply absurd, on par with the assertion that the Federal Reserve doesn’t need an external audit because it performs so many internal ones.

As a general rule, Americans look disfavorably upon any politician who attempts to narrow the scope of the Bill of Rights, particularly with regards to the First and Second Amendments. If you don’t want mosques built in your community, the correct time to deal with the issue is not permitting immigration from countries filled with people who are inclined to want to build mosques.

Dean Baker, who is among those who foresaw the 2008 meltdown, notes that Romney’s economic advisers didn’t:

That’s right, the Washington Post told readers that the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination is relying on two economists, Greg Mankiw and Glenn Hubbard, who completely missed the $8 trillion housing bubble whose collapse wrecked the economy. Unfortunately the Post neglected to mention this fact to readers.

Since Romney is making his ability to manage the economy the centerpiece of his campaign it would have been worth noting that his two top economic advisers were unable to see the largest asset bubble in the history of the world. This might raise some questions about Mr. Romney’s competence.

It probably won’t, since there is practically no one in the media, still less the opinion pages, who knows the first thing about economics. But it certainly should.

It’s rather a neat trick. A Republican candidate caves on the debt limit while simultaneously telling Republicans they can’t cave:

We just can’t cave.

After months of posturing and failed leadership from President Obama and politicians of both parties, the debate on the debt limit is finally coming to a head.

I honestly believe we have reached a moment in history when the fate of our country is at a crossroads.

Down one road is an uncertain future marked by reckless spending that deepens the debt and deficits that are killing jobs and holding American prosperity hostage. The elites and experts tell us we have no choice but to accept the path of higher taxes and new borrowing. And naturally, they prophesize disaster if we don’t continue down the only path the rest of us know America can’t afford.

But this is the same argument we’ve heard before. Trillions of dollars in spending later and trillions more in the hole, it is time to change course and chart a new direction….

Raising the debt limit without fundamental reforms will tell the world our government has become so corrupted by spending that we are beyond redemption. Our allies will grow more anxious about what a diminished America means for their future. And our enemies will grow more emboldened.

The issue isn’t raising the debt limit “without fundamental reforms”. It is raising the debt limit, period. It doesn’t matter what excuses Republicans offer for it, if they vote to raise it, (as I expect they will), they will eminently merit the political crucifixion that awaits them. This is their “read my lips” moment and I fully expect them to follow the example of George Herbert Walker Bush.

Somehow, I tend to doubt 40 people will be killed every day by hash brownie overdoses:

Battles between the vicious Zetas gang and other drug cartels killed more than 40 people in a 24-hour span, a government official said Saturday. At least 20 people were killed when gunmen opened fire in a bar late Friday in the northern city of Monterrey, where the gang is fighting its former ally, the Gulf Cartel, said federal security spokesman Alejandro Poire.

Eleven bodies shot with high-powered rifles were found earlier Friday, piled near a water well on the outskirts of Mexico City, where the gang is fighting the Knights Templar, Poire said. That is an offshoot of the La Familia gang that has terrorized its home state of Michoacan. He said another 10 people were found dead early Saturday in various parts of the northern city of Torreon, where the gang is fighting the Sinaloa cartel headed by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

“The violence is a product of this criminal rivalry … surrounding the intent to control illegal activities in a community, and not the only the earnings that come with it, but also with transporting drugs to the United States,” Poire said in a news conference.

It will be interesting to see if all the anti-drug conservatives will start to change their thinking once the Zetas and other drug cartels are shooting it out in Hispanic communities across America, or if they’ll stick with the “no matter how bad it gets, it would be even worse if drugs were legal” approach.