Some Random Thoughts on The Past 24 Hours
– Obama came across better on the ABC news tonight than he did in the live blogging here this afternoon.
– I tried to watch it like someone who does not read blogs.
– He seemed sorta determined. Presidential.
– I can still be won back, but he will have to fight at some point.
– He will not fight, so I will not be won back.
– He has now decided that his brand is the “non fighter”
– I know Republicans want me to think the worst of Obama.
– Obama must hate liberals like poison.
– How does Obama continue to see the absolute worst in liberals like me, but the best in conservatives John Boehner?
– Obama wants to be seen as the last honest man in DC
– My vote is being taken for granted.
– Bad politics and bad policy.
– Terrible.
Well with Republicans controlling the house, the Democratic party won’t be able to get its wish list all the time anymore. Now they actually have to compromise, which involves the Republican party getting some of the stuff it wants.
Uh… Hello? I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you have just arrived here from 1972.
You’re rapidly becoming a sanctimonious purist with abstract ideals.
To me, the Democrats (at least Obama) highly value unemployment benefits, START, and DADT. So they won’t give that up and are willing to negotiate on things they view as less important. The Republicans highly value tax cuts for income earned above $250,000, so they won’t give that up and are willing to negotiate on things they view as less important. Listen, if you wish to be purist and create a deadlocked government, fine. But if you wish to get stuff done, compromises are going to have to be made.
Suddenly, all the liberals here are starting to sound like O’Donnell supporters from the primary in their march to destroy pragmatism and save “purity”.
Leave O’Donnell out of it. She took out Castle. She’s my hero right now…. I’ll think I’ll bake her a cake on her birthday….
Serious… We owe her. Coons owes her…
Relax Jason.
Unfortunately, we came up several votes shy in the Senate.
So how many times have we lost to the Cowboys in mid season only to cream them when it counted, in the playoffs?
Republicans can’t make stuff up when they’re accountable for running the show. People like us, hold their feet to the fire. The Republicans now have to make their case, and they don’t have one.
The American people vote again in two years. They will have a choice between one party that made their life better, and one that didn’t. ..
Let’s see how that goes… His second term really has nothing to do with what he does or doesn’t do. It has to do whether the economy comes roaring back or doesn’t…..
The people complaining that Obama didn’t fight do remember how Obama spent the month of September talking about this subject and that Congressional Democrats decided not to vote on the issue before the election, right? Do people also remember that the House passed middle class only tax cuts last week and the Senate failed to on Saturday. Five Democrats voted against them. This is why Obama had to negotiate.
I know this is off topic by thirty years but I came out of the Spectrum from a GREAT concert by THE BOSS to learn John Lennon was dead.
“So long ago
Was it in a dream, was it just a dream?
I had know, yes I know
Seemed so very real, it seemed so real to me
Took a walk down the street
Thru the heat whispered trees
I thought I could hear (hear, hear, hear)
Somebody call out my name as it started to rain”-#9 Dream
U.I.: You call whatever Obama did in September fighting? Please. And now he says he is going to “fight for it” in 2012? Great. He is going to fight to raise taxes in an election year. That’s a winner, for sure. Remember Walter Mondale?
But I suppose he thinks that since “we’ll fix it later” lie worked for HCR and DADT, it will work for this, too.
Bush had his 4 major tax bills passed via reconciliation. Obama could have done the same thing, but he never even tried. He only needed 50 votes plus Biden’s, and he has those in the Senate, easily.
He is an incompetent leader and a failure as a negotiator.
To Del-tarian if the tax deal was including agreements for DADT and START and other nuggets then maybe there’d be less progressive angst. It wasn’t. THE GOP doesn’t/won’t negotiate.
I agree UI. The chicken shits in Congress didn’t want to deal with this pre-2010 elections when they should have. But it begs the question of how a two-year extension is in any way sane. It isn’t.
The next election year showdown will go no better than this one did on Bushie’s cuts for billionaires. Can Congress force the deal’s revision to one year only and work ahead for comprehensive tax reform for 2011?
kavips, why don’t you count the number of Superbowl rings the Cowboys have versus the Eagles?
Cowboys: 8
Eagles: 0
The American people voted a month ago and made “a choice between one party that made their life better, and one that didn’t.”
Guess which one won?
Bush had his 4 major tax bills passed via reconciliation. Obama could have done the same thing, but he never even tried. He only needed 50 votes plus Biden’s, and he has those in the Senate, easily.
Not so. Any bill to undo the 2001 Act’s sunset would have required 60 votes under the Byrd Rule.
http://budget.senate.gov/democratic/crsbackground/byrdrule.html
For the first time in my life I went out and campaigned for someone. I went to Rodney Sq and took pictures of this guy.
I was excited, I put in my time and to be honest with you, I believed this asshole.
Now, I have to worry (more than ever) about my retirement, my social security, when I can retire, my health care, my health care costs and whether or not I’m going to be spied on, locked up indefinitely or entrapped by the FBI.
But hey, the DOW is 5000 points higher since he took office….
Belinsky, he wouldn’t have to link the two bills. He could have proposed his tax bill as a separate piece of legislation, not as an undoing of the 2001 act.
Any bill to change the sunset would have decreased net revenues beyond the period covered by reconciliation and therefore triggered the Byrd Rule. Believe me, the tacticians have studied these rules.
“Undoing the 2001 sunset” is basically a straight-up tax cut bill, no matter how you slice it.
The provision that triggered the Byrd Rule in 2001 was:
But remember at the time there WAS no deficit – there was a massive surplus (Thank you, President Clinton!) CBO projected the tax cuts would not use up all the surplus until 2009. That is why the Repubs had to expire them in 2010. The sunset sidestepped the Byrd Rule and allowed them to pass it with 51 votes instead of 60.
But now, we don’t have a surplus to work with. Any tax cut will immediately increase the deficit and trigger the Byrd Rule, requiring 60 votes. That is why it was so important to make HCR deficit-neutral – to avoid the 60-vote requirement.
Good points, Belinsky and anon. However, I think that it does depend on how you slice it. It could depend how you structured the tax rates in the bill and any stimulative effects as to whether or not it would increase the deficit, i.e. offset middle-class tax rate cuts with higher rates for incomes above $250k and higher corporate tax rates.
After all, they did make HCR “deficit-neutral.” 😉
I’m not stupid, but man I’m tired of this. As long as Delaware is a safe blue seat again in 2012 I’m voting third party. Any suggestions?
DV. I don’t think anybody is as unguarded about it being all about them and their hurt feelings. But let’s face it, hurt feelings are a part of the picture. As the Dem base, we are used to being stomped on by the media and god knows we are used to being stomped on by Republucans. We’ve become accustomed to being ignored by Democrats, but to be stomped on by Democrats is hard to take.
Btw. Have you found a new podcast site yet? You are on that right?
I am on it yes. I had to go out of town after thanksgiving for a week so that set me back on my “research”
that and my por@ addiction
Hard left Progressives are the new african american vote. We’ll get plenty of lip service, no action, and we will STILL vote Democrat while they compromise and laugh all the way to the ballot box. yay us.
Dear China, We’ve hit a rough patch, again. We really hate to ask but would you be so kind as to front us several hundred billion and hold off on selling our asses out from under?