Yes, You Have to Pay for Tax Cuts

Democrats should not rise to the bait of “fiscal conservatives” | Jeff Frankels Weblog | Views on the Economy and the World:

“The problem is that a heavy majority of the supposed fiscally conservative congressmen, although passionate about cutting government spending in the abstract, are in truth no better able to find specific dollars of budget cuts that they can support or defend to their constituents than are the Democrats.   Factoring in their immutable desire to cut taxes, I believe that if the Republicans were in full control, we would have larger budget deficits in the coming years than if the Obama crowd retained power.  This is what happened in a big way when Presidents Reagan and GW Bush took office promising to cut the debt while also cutting taxes.   Spending, deficits, and debt soared during their terms, relative to their respective Democratic predecessors.  There is no reason to think anything has changed…

Rep. Paul Ryan’s supposedly tough long-term plan to cut spending doesn’t balance the budget until 50 years from now and runs up another $62 trillion in national debt in the meantime…” [emphasis mine]

(Via Grasping Reality with Both Hands.)

Democratic “investment” = GOP “tax cuts” = increased government spending.

What Will a Republican Majority Do Next?

What Will a Republican Majority Do Next?:

“The current Republican Party lacks a similar basic, manageable agenda. It’s all or nothing. And the GOP no longer seems to have the capacity to get policy plans developed into legislation that is written, negotiated, and signed into law. The GOP has made a political choice to cut off a lot of its policy capacity. That’s why it has no budget plans other than Ryan’s super-unpopular one. It’s why it didn’t come up with any meaningful alternative to health reform. It’s not because Republicans are dumb — although Boehner and his allies were no match for Nancy Pelosi in a battle of tactics and determination — but because offering an alternative would mean negotiating, finding areas of agreement and disagreement.”

(Via Grasping Reality with Both Hands.)

Now this is punditry. Predicted circa July 2010.

Live up to Expectations

Remarks by the President at a Memorial Service for the Victims of the Shooting in Tucson, Arizona | The White House:

I want to live up to her expectations.  (Applause.)  I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it.  I want America to be as good as she imagined it.  (Applause.)  All of us -– we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.  (Applause.)

Read the speech.  It’s worth it.

(Via The White House.)

Obama: A Non-Compromise Compromise?

So Obama decides to go the “This $hit is chess; it ain’t checkers” route.  Gangsta for the middle.  I like.

It should be interesting to see if the mass middle will support him.  Obama’s already painting the GOP as the bad guys.  The thinking goes this way: my agenda that protects the middle class will go forward in exchange for giving the GOP what they want.  He’s already painting the GOP as the party for the rich against the rest of us.  In other words, he calls out the GOP on class warfare without using those words.  On first blush, I thought this was terrible for Obama, but he just might be on to something.

Keep solving problems, Mr. President.  Serve them fools!

‘Reparations’

Full Repost.

‘Reparations’:

“I’ve looked at this clip a few times where King calls Barack Obama ‘very urban.’ I don’t think ‘very urban’ is a slur for black. I think the point is that urban politicians aren’t interested in rural Americans. In this case, Barack Obama is interested in ‘rural America’ because the farmers are black, and it gives Obama a chance to prosecute his nefarious plot to award slavery reparations:

‘We’ve got to stand up at some point and say, ‘We are not gonna pay slavery reparations in the United States Congress,” he said. ‘That war’s been fought. That was over a century ago. That debt was paid for in blood and it was paid for in the blood of a lot of Yankees, especially. And there’s no reparations for the blood that paid for the sin of slavery. No one’s filing that claim.’
There’s a lot wrong here, but let’s stick with the obvious. In point of fact, the black farmers suit is about discrimination during the 1980s and 1990s. Moreover, there is no demonstrable movement in the Obama administration, among black legislators, or even among black people to push for damages for slavery. On the contrary, ‘reparations’ is something white populists yell when they want to rally their race-addled base. So for Rush Limbaugh, the way to understand food stamps, unemployment benefits are to ‘think forced reparations.’ For Glenn Beck health care reform is not something that can be debated with facts and figures, but ‘the beginning of reparations.‘ And so it is with Steve King, that a suit brought to remedy actions taken within the last couple decades, are actually revealed as ‘slavery reparations.’
Some further thoughts: First, Beck and Limbaugh are employing a formula that has proven remarkably successful throughout American history–rallying against social investment because it might actually help a despised minority of the population. The cause of public education in the South, for instance, was long hampered by the notion that, however it might help poor and working whites, it might also help blacks too.
Second, it’s been asserted that this recent tactic by white populists to brand those who protest racism as the actual racists, is some new innovation. In fact, as I’ve said before, it’s a time honored tactic of actual racists. All one need do is read the documents of Civil War secessionists, white supremacist to the core, claiming that the real goal of ‘Lincolnism’ was to make the enslavement of whites. Or read Phillip Dray’s At The Hands Of Persons Unknown, where people who collected the fingers, toes and testicles of lynched black men claimed that they were projecting white chastity from black brutes. Rarely does a racist label himself as such.
Third, this is the same Steve King who recently asserted that Obama ‘favors the black person.’ It’s also the same Steve King who will chair the House subcommittee on immigration. Elections have consequences.

(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates :: The Atlantic.)

Excellent as always.

You’re Welcome, Mr. President

Got this from Barack yesterday.

Robert —

When Michelle and I sit down with our family to give thanks today, I want you to know that we’ll be especially grateful for folks like you.

Everything we have been able to accomplish in the last two years was possible because you have been willing to work for it and organize for it.

And every time we face a setback, or when progress doesn’t happen as quickly as we would like, we know that you’ll be right there with us, ready to fight another day.

So I want to thank you — for everything.

I also hope you’ll join me in taking a moment to remember that the freedoms and security we enjoy as Americans are protected by the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces. These patriots are willing to lay down their lives in our defense, and each of us owes them and their families a debt of gratitude.

Have a wonderful day, and God bless.

Barack

You’re welcome, Mr. President.

Shirley Sherrod’s Contextual Nightmare | FactCheck.org

Fox News and Andrew Breitbart should lose a good amount of credibility. This was malice aforethought.

Shirley Sherrod’s Contextual Nightmare | FactCheck.org:

“We’ve posted no shortage of pieces on political attacks that leave context on the cutting room floor to give the public a misleading impression. An opponent’s statements, cherry-picked and shorn of any language that could provide the intended meaning, can be shaped into a slashing ad. 
Or they can lose a woman her job. The latest victim of the missing context trick is U.S. Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod. Her story shows the harm that can result from taking something out of context — or acting before all the facts are in.”

(Via FactCheck.org.)

Fox News and Andrew Breitbart (no I won’t link to them) should lose a good amount of credibility. This was malice aforethought.

On Lacking All Conviction – National – The Atlantic

The Obama administration takes a bad position on the Sherrod debacle.

On Lacking All Conviction – National – The Atlantic:

“It’s important to note the shift in argument from ‘elements of racism’ to ‘a racist group.’ Perhaps Biden just answering a question. In any case, he was not at pains to take up the NAACP’s more nuanced point. Nor was he much interested in the question–the notion that Tea Party racism is reducible to people ‘on the periphery’ who have ‘expressed really unfortunate comments’ is a woeful understatement directly at odds with the facts. But that is the administration’s position.”

(Via The Atlantic.)

I missed this.  Coates is right on point.  Shame on Obama for that.

Obama Kills like Colbert

We’ll Tell You If You’re Black Or Not – National – The Atlantic

His response is a caricature of the worst stereotypes of white liberalism. Note the invocation of a “Marxist View Of Race.” Note the sense that blackness is strictly the work of “Southern Whites.” Note the arrogance of assuming that “blackness” is defined by 17th century racists, and that the people being defined have no agency. In one fell column, Judis anoints himself High Arbiter of Blackness, and then dismisses Obama’s complicated and arduous process as the president simply doing “what was expected of him.”

The only appropriate response to this sentiment is to regrettably resort to the language of my folks and ask the following–Who the fuck is John Judis?

via We’ll Tell You If You’re Black Or Not – National – The Atlantic.

But seriously, who the f— is he?

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