Coming to terrestrial Radio our very own Political Pistachio, Douglas V. Gibbs!http://www.kcaaradio.com/
Begins August 6th
Coming to terrestrial Radio our very own Political Pistachio, Douglas V. Gibbs!http://www.kcaaradio.com/
Begins August 6th
by JASmius
Boehner & McConnell didn't give him the crisis opening he wanted, and it really showed tonight:
Ending a perilous stalemate, President Barack Obama and congressional leaders announced a historic agreement Sunday night on emergency legislation to avert the nation's first-ever financial default.
The dramatic resolution lifted a cloud that had threatened the still-fragile economic recovery at home — and it instantly powered a rise in financial markets overseas.
The agreement would slice at least $2.2 trillion from federal spending over a decade, a steep price for many Democrats, too little for many Republicans. The Treasury's authority to borrow would be extended beyond the 2012 elections, a key objective for Obama, though the president had to give up his insistence on raising taxes on wealthy Americans to reduce deficits.
The deal, with scant time remaining before Tuesday's debt-limit deadline for paying government bills, "will allow us to avoid default and end the crisis that Washington imposed on the rest of America," the president said in an announcement at the White House.
Default "would have had a devastating effect on our economy," he said.
If I may translate: "My poll numbers are cratering as it is, which means I couldn't have ordered a default and escaped the blame for it like I did the 2008 financial panic that put me into power without the wingnuts caving, and that would have had a devastating effect on my re-election chances, so I'm ending the phony crisis that I wanted to impose on America."
Of course, the actual debt crisis, which is the size of the debt itself, is still imminent, and because the GOP didn't succumb to B.O.'s panicmongering, he won't be able to escape responsibility for it. That's the strategic political takeaway from Episode II of Debt Wars: By injecting steel into Republican spines, the Tea Party has forced a change in the direction of the fiscal debate and now has its first measurable results. Sure, the cuts are woefully inadequate. But in order to turn the tide, you have to stop it first. To, um, borrow a World War II metaphor, you can't get to Berlin without an El Alamein and Stalingrad first.
But leave it to Mary Tyler Less to ride to Red Barry's rescue:
"Someone has to say no. I will," said Representative Michele Bachmann, R-MN6, a contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
Mark my words, and mark them well: If House Tea Partiers follow this woman's advice and shoot down this deal, thereby pulling a comprehensive PR disaster from the jaws of a modest downpayment on eventual victory, they will be handing the Li'l President and his currently divided party both a unifying event and a propaganda bludgeon with which to turn 2012 into a reprise of 2008.
Take my advice, Michelle: Pocket your meager winnings and get ready for the next round. The Debt Wars have a looooong way to go.
[cross-posted at Hard Starboard]
by JASmius
Hot off the Assholiated Press wires:
Republican and Democratic Congressional leaders are indicating they have agreed to a compromise debt ceiling deal with the White House. The framework of the deal includes $1 in cuts for every dollar raised in the debt ceiling; no new taxes; and no more votes on the debt ceiling until after the 2012 election.
Wins for our side: Actual spending cuts, no new taxes to clobber an already depressed economy (beyond the ones already in place); wins for the other side: Spending cuts not nearly large enough, entitlements remain untouched, no more debt ceiling votes until after November 2012. Essentially, a stalemate.
Could we have done better if we had kicked Red Barry and Dirty Harry in the nuts and dared them to force a default? No, we could not, because a default was entirely at the White House's discretion, and if we had given him that garishly overt an opening, he would have taken it, ordered a default, and then claimed that it was solely because of Republican extremist intransigence. "I tried to meet them halfway, but they let the radical Tea Partiers drive the country's finances back into the ditch." And independent (i.e. ignorant, low-information, emotion-driven) voters would have swallowed it hook, line, & sinker. It would have been Newt Gingrich's overreaching in the second government shutdown showdown with Bill Clinton back in the winter of '95 all over again.
The irony? We'll get a crisis anyway. The effect of this deal will be negligible. The problem isn't whether or not the debt ceiling got raised and never was; it's the magnitude of debt we already have and the direction in which that number is heading. Nothing that came out of the debt ceiling melodrama was going to change that. It's been decades in the making, the Obamidency has simply (and by design) served to bring it to a head a decade or so sooner than it otherwise would have.
But because the GOP hung tough and forced the White House and Senate Dems to accept a genuine compromise (i.e. nobody likes this deal), it also means we forced them to take at least partial ownership of the debt crisis still to come. Which means it'll be much more difficult for The One to duck responsibility when it happens.
Crises only work for wannabe dictators when they're not likely to wind up the ones (figuratively or literally) hanging from lampposts. And with the Obamaconomy in its current dismal straits, his avenue of re-election escape is about to get even narrower.
[cross-posted at Hard Starboard]
Published July 22, 2011
| FoxNews.com
A legislative proposal in San Francisco seeks to make ex-cons and felons a protected class, along with existing categories of residents like African-Americans, people with disabilities and pregnant women. If passed by city supervisors, landlords and employers would be prohibited from asking applicants about their criminal past.