Who will take on Obama in 2012?

Well, I had my suspicions, but this confirms it: WILL IS JOE BIDEN.

Biden: Tea partiers like 'terrorists'

Perhaps Will was right: there aren't that many liberals in media saying hateful things. The ones saying hateful things are in office.

I'll read Joe later. I am going to put up my half finished response up to an earlier post now because I don't have time now to finish it and will get back to it later because I want to link something else now so I don't lose the post.

quote=Yoda;750904]Right. And there's absolutely no significance to the fact that you chose not to compare their "fanaticism" to something more benign, like overzealous sports fans, but instead chose to compare it to mother-flipping terrorists.

Seriously, listen to yourself. It's ridiculous enough that you've made this comparison. Please do not compound that ridiculousness by making me explain why it's ridiculous.

I didn't compare them to sports fanatics because their behavior is benign (except those who get violent). But those who are willing to trigger a Depression by refusing to compromise are dangerous.




I'm going to reply to all of these at once, because one thing answers them all. And it's something I already said, too:

You have no basis from which to say that the Republicans are "creating economic armageddon" because 1) Democrats can agree to cut spending, and 2) it's the spending that put us in this position to begin with. It's like borrowing money from your parents and then blaming them for ruining your credit when they refuse to loan you more and point out that you could just spend less. It is simply false to suggest that the only culpability lies with the party asking for spending concessions, and none lies with the people doing all the spending. So unless you think debt ceiling hikes should be automatic, and should happen without any assurance that spending be curbed, then this talking point is empty. Sorry, but the fact that it makes for good rhetoric does not make it fair or accurate. It isn't.

Reply Below:
The Democrats agreed to cut spending, but not to the Tea Party's speicfications and also insisted on something unacheivable, a constitutional amendment to be sent to the staets that would require two-thirds vote of both houses. They don't get that we go into default. I suppose you would say we don't default if the Democrats do everything the Tea Party wants them to do. Well, the political process doesn't work that way and Democrats believe a constitional amendemnt requiring balanced budget at all times is a very bad idea.


Back to Yoda:
The problem with all of these arguments, really, is that they assume that what the Tea Party wants is unreasonable, and that what the Democrats want is reasonable. But you don't get to assume that in a political disagreement your side is the reasonable one. Every side in a political disagreement thinks it's the reasonable one. That's why there's a disagreement in the first place.

Of couse what the Tea Party wants is unreasonable. They didn't win, did they? They will not vote for this compromise. They lost. The reason I think the Democrats were being more reasonable is they were taking a more centrist position and were willing to make more concessions. The Democrats have extremists also who were not happy with many of the concessions Obama made. Nancy Pelosi isn't happy. But they didn't control the Democrat Party's agenda. in the end Senate leader McConnel subverted the Tea Party people and made them irrelevant to the negotiations

You seem to think that you can make this assumption based only on the fact that Democrats are apparently compromising. But the fact that the Democrats are willing to compromise on what they want tells us absolutely nothing about who's being reasonable. Reasonableness is comprised of not just flexibility, but correctness. If someone wanted to raise taxes by 90% across the board, and then "compromised" at 25%, that would not make them reasonable. It means their initial stance was very unreasonable.

But that wasn't happening here. The Republicans refused not only to discuss any increase in taxes, but not even elimination of farm subsidies unless it was balanced by tax cuts so there would be no revenue enhancements. They wanted only to cut pepending, which I would definitely say was unreasonable on their part.

This means that your entire argument about this "fanaticism" is based on a presupposition. And since I don't share your presupposition, and you have advanced no serious argument to explain why I should, your claim does not require an explanation from anyone who doesn't already agree with you. Simple. You have to make an actual, economically-grounded argument. If you don't, then this is all an elaborate way of reminding me that you simply agree with Democrats. Which I'm pretty sure I knew.




I'm only pointing out that it failed, and that people are still clinging to the thinking that produced it. It honestly doesn't matter to me if you classify this as an agreement between us or a concession on your part. The important part is that it's true.

And the comparison is not irrelevant, because it's not meant to make a point about the debt ceiling negotiations. It's meant to make a point about what gets labeled "fanaticism" and what does not. It is, like so many other things, a product of one's political allegiances. You talk about the Tea Party's allegeded fanaticism as if it were something both Republicans and Democrats ought to be able to agree on, but when examined it's clear that there's no reason for it. You're not making the accusation from a common ground, you're making it from the ground you were already standing on.




This is just empty. There is nothing, anywhere, which supports the idea that you need to have some inherent "balance." There's no such thing as a necessary balance between a good idea and a bad one. There is no metaphysical principle which says that splitting the difference between whatever happens to be the primary economic positions' of the major parties at any given time is a good thing.

Are we talking about the same thing? I was referring to the inflexiblity of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution that requires the budget must always be balanced.



Even if we agree that society needs a "balance" of taxes and spending, that would tell us precisely nothing about which direction we're out of balance in. Most Republicans say spending is too high. Most Democrats say taxes is too low. So if you want to make an argument about "balance," you can't just say you want balance, as if that's supposed to constitute a position.


Sure it is. Because I'm making the case that fanaticism is overlooked when one mostly agrees with the fanatics. I'm making the case that whether or not you're a fantatic or brave and principled is largely a product of whether or not you're right. And I'm also sorta-kinda making the point that make what qualifies as "fanaticism" is too sensitive, if the word seems to describe so many people.

I don't know how to address claims like "only some" or "many were." If you advance specific arguments, I will offer specific rebuttals. But you're right about one thing: "there wasn't going to be a stimulus passed large enough to satisfy them." That is precisely my point! The failure of stimulus will never convince them that their ideology is, at least in this area, misguided. It will always be rationalized by saying they did not do enough.

Here's the argument, in a nutshell: if a political position which treats both success and failure as confirmation of its position is not fanatical, then nothing is.



There were economists that said we needed X number of dollars to stimulate the economy and the amount passed was considerably below it and they predicted it would fail. Are they being fanatics? Well, that is what their Keynesian beliefs said. They weren't involved in the negotiating process




I'd say Keith Olbermann ranks up there with any of them. "Worst Person in the World"? Hyperbole, much? And I dunno how much of Air America you listened to, but it really wasn't any better.

Olberman is the only one that comes close and he is still weak tea compared to the ones I cited. Olbermann is comparable to the second string conservative talkers. I used to listen to Air America and it was real boring. So in that sense they are actually worse. But only one host who was bounced around and coudn't hold a regular show was nasty and that is the one I mentioned before. Progressive talk show hosts' main crime is they are lousy. Al Franken was terrible becuae he wasn't a good talker. He certainly wasn't angry like so many conservatives. This other guy who replaced him locally and is still on the air, not angry and real boring. Very few of the liberal radio hosts sound angry. Randi Rhodes is mildly angry, but, man, is she hard to listen to, sounding like an old Jewish grandmother nagging you to put on your overcoat. Occasionally she says something witty, but it is not worth listening to the rest of her chatter for the isolated decent wisecrack.

Conservative dominance in perceived meanness is probably a product of conservative dominance in radio and, to a lesser extent, television. When you have more media personalities in general, you'll have more angry ones, too. But I don't this indicates some special virtue on the part of progressives.
There are enough liberal talk show hosts on the air these days and none are as nasty as Glenn Beck was at Fox and he turned out to be too controversial and a pain in the ass for even them. Michael Savage lost his television gig because of his homophobic mouth. And Rush Limbaugh lost his football commentator role because he is such a closet bigot. And earlier on his terrible televsion show with all the Limbaugh clones in the audience took an inexcusable potshot at a little girl's looks because he didn't like her parents. Where are the liberal television talk show hosts that are this nasty?


Obama, February of 2009, selling the stimulus package:

"Millions more Americans will lose their jobs. Homes will be lost. Families will go without health care. Our crippling dependence on foreign oil will continue. That is the price of inaction."

This kind of stuff was coming out all the time. I can find more pretty easily, but I didn't figure this would actually be a point of contention (is it, really?). It wasn't that long ago; I'm sure you remember all the quotes like this about all the terrible things that would befall us if we didn't pass the stimulus, just as I do. Of course, most of those terrible things happened even after we did pass it.

That quote is not at all an example of demagoguing. He isn't scapegoating or slandering or using hateful language. He is stating his honest opinion what will happen if the stimulus package isn't passed. And where is your evidence he was wrong? This argument you cite isn't the stimulus will improve the economy, it is if it doesn't pass things will be much worse. I don't know if that is the case or not, but certainly I am convinced some good things came from the stimulus, but perhaps not as far reaching as Obama promised in other remarks, not these. You compare these comments to the corrosive, harsh, hateful words that come out of Glenn Beck who you have defended in the past, like Obama hates white people? That's demagoguing, not overselling a stimulus package. I wouldn't waste any of my breath defending any left talker who was as vile as Beck. I don't have anything positive to say about that slimeball who was always saying "Bush crime family."


Of course the other side does that. Again: I'm not accusing Democrats of being the only ones who demagogue things. The equivalence you're drawing is my entire point.[/quote]
But you haven't cited an equivalence. Hannity calling the ecconomy "the Obama recession' a few days after an election and more than a month before Obama is sworn in is not on the same level of predicting millions of jobs will be lost.



I haven't finished yet. I skip around, that is why it has an ending, It is still in progress.

Okay, I am done

__________________
It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula

By David Lauter, Washington Bureau August 1, 2011, 7:00 p.m.



Reporting from Washington—
High-stakes negotiations force people to reveal what they really care about, and in the 11th-hour deal to stave off a federal financial default, President Obama and congressional Democrats and Republicans each made clear their top priorities.

For Republicans, it was preventing any tax increase to upper-income families.

For Democrats, it was ensuring no cuts to Social Security, Medicaid and a handful of other programs that aid the elderly and the poor.

And for Obama, it was getting a deal that would end the threat of an economy-shaking default until after the 2012 presidential election.

None of the key players was willing to go all out to actually solve the nation's long-term financial problems. As a result, the deal doesn't.

"In reaching this agreement, each political party yielded to the other party's highest-priority political and ideological interest," and fails to resolve the country's long-term budget problems, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Monday.

Indeed, for all the high-stakes political drama and the apparent damage the months-long debate has inflicted on the political standing of both parties and the president, the compromise — what White House officials refer to as a "lowest common denominator" deal — achieves relatively little in the short term.

Over the next two years, the final compromise comes very close to the initial request by Obama — a "clean" debt ceiling increase that allows the government to pay its bills and does nothing else.

In the government's 2012 fiscal year, the cut would be $21 billion, or less than 1% of a nearly $3.7-trillion federal budget, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The bulk of the projected $2.1 trillion or more of cuts does not start kicking in until after the next election when a future Congress and president could choose to rewrite the plan — a point that many conservatives have worried about.

"Enforcement is the key to whatever we do. It's always in the out years and it never happens," said Sen. Michael D. Crapo (R-Idaho), using the budget lingo for the latter years of a long-term deal.

The bill almost certainly defers until after next year's election the central choice most budget experts say the country eventually must make: higher taxes or deep cuts in Medicare, the nation's huge and fast-growing health program for the elderly.

"We missed a great opportunity," Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, the second-ranking Democrat in the House, said during Monday's debate.

A bipartisan congressional committee set up by the compromise bill is supposed to grapple with the long-term choices over the next four months. White House officials insist they see that panel as a serious opportunity to try again for a major deficit reduction deal. Their hope is that members of both parties will back an agreement rather than accept automatic across-the-board cuts in defense and domestic agency budgets.

But many in Congress, whose leaders will appoint the panel's 12 members, believe the panel more likely will deadlock.

"I think it's very possible, maybe even probable, that with a committee you're going to have a 6-6 vote," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.).

To protect their top priorities in case those cuts do take effect, all the major players were willing to give up other goals they had sought.

Republicans have long championed spending for the military, but given the choice between protecting the Pentagon budget and avoiding new taxes, they agreed to a potential long-term cut in defense spending that would be significantly deeper than Obama has supported. The cut, about $540 billion over a decade, would require the Pentagon to consider shrinking the active-duty Army, reducing the Navy's 11 aircraft carriers or dropping Air Force plans to buy a new long-range bomber, analysts said.

Democrats, whose hand in the negotiations was strengthened when conservative Republicans refused last week to back a debt ceiling bill in the House, agreed to big cuts in federal agency budgets. But they held fast on Medicaid, the joint federal-state program of medical insurance for the poor. Only a few weeks ago, the program seemed doomed to major cuts that the White House had indicated it could accept as part of a broader deal.

But liberal interest groups rallied to support the program, winning key support from Gene Sperling, the head of Obama's National Economic Council, according to participants in the final negotiations. And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) made clear that Democrats would not vote for a compromise plan that included a Medicaid cut, said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), the party's leading expert on the program.

As for the White House, officials had spent weeks seeking a "grand bargain" that would cut the long-term deficit by some $4 trillion over the decade. But when House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) pulled the plug on those negotiations and introduced a bill that would require a second congressional vote on the debt near Christmas, the priority changed.

"The country and our economy could not go through this debate again in a short four or five months," a senior White House official told reporters. "So that was the president's very important priority, and that's accomplished as a result of this agreement."

But what the agreement leaves unaccomplished will remain high on the agenda of whoever is elected president in November 2012. The George W. Bush-era tax cuts will expire barely two months after the election, virtually guaranteeing a new debate over taxes. And whoever takes the oath of office in January 2013 will inherit a debt still rising and another debt ceiling vote just a few months away.

[email protected]

Oh, as far-fetched as it may seem my knowledge of the market is not "minimal". Understanding it OTOH eludes me. I mean - I know how it should work, too bad there are quirky little things like insider trading F-ing it up for all of us.

__________________

“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

Obamacare should be him feeding sick kids soup and reading them stories.

That's not really a "little thing" though, is it? That's how the market works.

Is it just me, or isn't this a monumental failure for the Obama administration? Both sides are unhappy with this deal, but if you ask me the Democrats have more reason to be unhappy than the Republicans. It weakens the politics on both sides, but above all it weakens the president enourmously. And I seriously doubt that this plan will solve any major problems with the American economy in the long run. If an election wasn't a little more than a year away, I wouldn't have ruled out an earlier extra election.

__________________
The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

--------

They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

I can reply now, Will, or wait for you to finish. It makes little difference to me. But I can probably cut off a lot of the debate right here and now (except for the terrorism stuff; more needs to be said there) by pointing out the following:

The Democrats in the House were split down the middle on the compromise, 95-95. The Tea Party Caucus voted for it, 32-28.

This bears repeating THE TEA PARTY VOTED FOR THE COMPROMISE MORE THAN DEMOCRATS.

I now look forward to numerous posts about how Democrats were willing to plunge the world into a fiery abyss of economic ruin and suffering with their Al Qaeda-like tactics. And to the swift retraction of the many, many claims that the Tea Party would never budge, compromise, or vote for any debt ceiling increase if it didn't include a balanced budget amendment.

The consensus, for what it's worth, is that Boehner and Obama like it, Congressional Republicans are reasonably happy with it, and Congressional Democrats are miffed. Which sounds about right to me.

Oh, it definitely won't solve any major problems. It's just a start. There's a lot left to be done.

I think the idea of Obama winning or losing has to be considered in context. For all the talk of meeting halfway and compromise, Republicans were negotiating from a fairly strong position. They have a sizable majority and public opinion is pretty hostile to the idea of high spending. We're less than a year removed from a Congressional turnover tsunami; under those circumstances the outcome isn't too surprising.

I predict a new book by Naomi Klein: The Shock Doctrine: vol. II.

Wrong, buttwipe. Kindly keep your smart-ass remarks about people you don't know stuffed away in the mudhole of your mind. You can say whatever you want about me, because I don't give a damn, but there is no reason for you to slander her.

Well, my first thought was to appologize for saying your knowledge was, like most people's, likely minimal in that I wasn't implying you were stupid. On the other hand, however, it might depend on how often you think "insider trading" occurs. As often as mail fraud? As bank robbery? Because all three are felonies, you know, and policed by federal officials. The SEC has long been extremely strict in requiring filings and reports to limit opportunities for and expose violations of insider trading, and it has become even stricter under new legislation. The Justice Department is quick to investigate any indication of insider or other illegal trades--a high-profile conviction involving billions of dollars means quick promotion for a federal assistant district attorney and a possible new political career for his boss. So if you think inside trading occurs frequently and easily and goes unpunished, your knowledge of the market is more minimal than you realize. There are literally millions of trades daily in equities, commodities, and other transactions around the globe that function honestly, legitimately, and provide the liquidity to keep the markets and the international economy functioning. To claim insider trading is a common event and a major impediment to the markets reveals an unsophisticated concept of the whole market process.

I now have a definite prediction who will be the Republican nominee for President.

It will be Mitt Romney.

If Rick Perry thinks the way to the White House is that cynical and phony stunt he just pulled he is sadly mistaken. That nonsense does not play outside of the South.

Pervasive cynicism is not analysis.

Rick Perry by doing this can't save the Republican Party from Mitt Romney, who is still the only candidate who can beat Obama.

PFAW Edit Memo: The Response: Rick Perry Jockeys For The Fringe Vote

From: Michael Keegan, President, People For the American Way
To: Interested Parties
Date: August 4, 2011
Re: The Response: Rick Perry Jockeys For The Fringe Vote
On August 6th, Texas Gov. Rick Perry will host The Response, aChristian prayer rally in Houston’s Reliant Stadium that will anchor what he calls “a day of prayer and fasting on behalf of our nation.” Timed to take place shortly before the expected kick-off of Perry’s presidential campaign, The Response is presumably meant to introduce Americans to Perry’s values and vision for the country. Americans would do well to pay close attention: in planning The Response, Perry has aligned himself withsome of the most extreme figures on the Religious Right and embraced a troubling sectarian vision for the country.
The Response’s call to prayer is deliberately designed to exclude people of non-Christian faiths: rallyspokesman and former Perry aide Eric Bearse said that non-Christians should attend so they can “seek out the living Christ.” One organizer said that inviting people of other faiths to speak at the rally would be “idolatry of the worst sort.”
But Perry and The Response organizers aren’t just excluding non-Christians. As documented by People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch, they have designed the rally to only appeal to a particular brand of the Christian Right: the same group which Perry is courting as he contemplates and plans a run for the presidency.
The Religious Right, disenchanted with the current GOP field, would be a key constituency for Perry in the Republican primaries, and the Texas governor knows it. Many prominent Religious Right activists have reportedly participated in strategy sessions calling for additional candidates – and Perry specifically – to enter the presidential race. Leaders including Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins and Concerned Women for America CEO Penny Nance have also shown their regard for Perry by signing on as co-chairmen of The Response.
But most telling is the group that Perry chose as the official host entity of his blockbuster prayer event: the American Family Association (AFA). The AFA and its leaders have a long track record of promoting discrimination against gays and lesbians, Muslim-Americans and Native Americans. AFA Executive Vice President Buddy Smith, who is on the leadership board of The Response, claims that gays and lesbians “are in the clasp of Satan.” Bryan Fischer, the AFA’s chief spokesman, has called gay Americans “domestic terrorists” and claimed that gays were behind the rise of the Nazi Party and the Holocaust. He has demanded that all non-Christian immigrants “convert to Christianity” and said Native Americans are “morally disqualified from sovereign control of American soil.”
But the leaders of AFA are far from the only Perry allies to hold radical views.
Perry tapped several members of The Response teamfrom the staff of the International House of Prayer (IHOP), a 24/7/365 prayer outlet whose affiliated The Call prayer rally serves as the model for The Response. IHOP – which is currently involved in a lawsuit from the International House of Pancakes – calls for the conversion of Jews to Christianity in order to bring about the End Times and employs Lou Engle, a preacher who defended legislation in Uganda that would make homosexuality a crime punishable by death. The group’s founder and executive director, Mike Bickle (also an official endorser of The Response) has claimed that Oprah Winfrey is the harbinger of the Antichrist and that the movement for marriage equality is “rooted in the depths of Hell.”
Other members of The Response leadership board include Jim Garlow, who has said supporters of gay rights are part of an “Antichrist spirit,” Doug Stringer, who claimed that “homosexuality” and “moral looseness” were responsible for the September 11th terrorist attacks, and Alice Patterson, who argued that the Democratic Party is dominated by “an invisible network of evil comprising an unholy structure.”
Many of The Response’s official endorsershave voiced similarly extreme beliefs:

• John Benefiel, who called the Statue of Liberty a “demonic idol,” argued that Washington D.C. is under a supernatural curse, and said that the Illuminati are behind the gay rights movement and the health care reform law.
• Cindy Jacobs, who blamed freak bird deaths in Arkansas on the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
• John Hagee, who said Hitler was sent by God to hunt Jews and called the Roman Catholic Church the “Whore of Babylon.”
• C. Peter Wagner, who has urged believers to ‘cleanse their homes’ by destroying non-Protestant religious objects and said that a Japanese ritual involving “sexual intercourse” between the Emperor and a goddess was to blame for that country’s economic problems and the deadly earthquake in March.

And that is just scratching the surface. Other official endorsers of Perry’s rally have called for government regulation of gay sex, compared the fight against marriage equality to the fight against slavery, said that African Americans are punished by God for supporting the Democratic Party and floated violent revolution against the Obama administration.
Perry’s connections to such fringe figures are no mere oversight: the governor has personal ties to many of these extreme leaders.
Perry’s handling of The Response should trouble not only those who are committed to the constitutional separation of church and state but all Americans concerned about a presidential candidate who is ready to pander to the most radical forces on the far-right.

It happens quite a lot.

The way they were acting I didn't think they would agree to it, making Boehner add that toxic required balanced budget amendment making his supposed compromise dead. Democrats didn't in their voting plunge the world into a fiery abyss because they split, they didn't vote as Republicans during the earlier stages as one bloc. In the end it was bipartisan, but it was a pretty weak agreemnt which had both parties more interested in protecting their political base than coming up with something that is a long term solution. Obama was willing to make more concessions on entitlement programs than is in this agreement.

But now the debate will be cutting entitlement programs significantly without raising taxes on the rich and we will see what the reaction is. Voters don't like big spending in principal, but then when you ask them fior specifics they don't want to cut anything either.The idea this was a Republican victory is pretty weak. That defense automatic cutting was a mjor concession. They sacrificed it for no new taxes while the Dems got entitlement benefits exempt. It doesn't really solve anything this agreement, but gets both parties a little breathing room for a year.

__________________
"You, me, everyone...we are all made of star stuff." - Neil Degrasse Tyson

https://shawnsmovienight.blogspot.com/

Er, 95 Democrats did vote to "plunge the world into a fiery abyss" according to you. A larger proportion of them did than Tea Partiers. That's kind of a big deal, given the way you and others have been talking about the Tea Partiers' willingness to allegedly destroy the nation's finances. In fact, it pretty much destroys all the rhetoric leveled at them over the last few weeks.

A lot of people blatantly misread the situation, is the absolute nicest way I can put it. They leveled all sorts of charges at the Tea Party that ended up being demontrably false. I wonder if that will lead to any increased humility in the future.

Probably not.