AP SOURCES: 'FISCAL CLIFF' DEAL EMERGING

WASHINGTON (AP) — The contours of a deal to avert the 'fiscal cliff' emerged Monday, with Democrats and Republicans agreeing to raise tax rates on family income over $450,000 a year, increase the estate tax rate and extend unemployment benefits for one year, officials familiar with the negotiations said.

But with a midnight deadline rapidly approaching, both sides were at an impasse over whether to put off automatic, across-the-board spending cuts set to take effect on Jan. 1, and if so, how to pay for that. Democrats want to put off the cuts for one year and offset the so-called sequester with unspecified revenue.

Officials emphasized that negotiations were continuing and the emerging deal was not yet final. President Barack Obama was to speak about the status of the negotiations from the White House Monday afternoon.

The proposal in the works would raise the tax rates on family income over $450,000 from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, the same level as under former President Bill Clinton. Also, estates would be taxed at 40 percent after the first $5 million for an individual and $10 million for a couple, up from 35 percent to 40 percent.

Unemployment benefits would be extended for one year. Without the extension, 2 million people would lose benefits beginning in early January.

I hate to bring racial politics into the equation, however, it is a truism of modern American reality.

Of the active duty and retired military that I interact with on a very regular basis, it was African-American military members who supported him. Period. My personal experience is that his support among white officers and enlisted is almost nonexistent.

This is also reflected in a very disturbing trend from the 2012 election. Self-identified "Black Protestants" voted for Obama at the 95% rate.

That, to me, is incredible.

Christ told us that by their fruits, we would know them. Obama is NOT a Christian by any stretch of the imagination. I believe that any black Christian who supported Obama either is being disobedient to Christ, or is not a real Christian (i.e. accepted Christ as their personal savior and is redeemed by Grace).

I know that sounds harsh, but it is what I hold to be the truth.

103 posted on Mon Dec 31 2012 15:18:07 GMT-0600 (Central Standard Time) by SkyPilot: “Of the active duty and retired military that I interact with on a very regular basis, it was African-American military members who supported him. Period. My personal experience is that his support among white officers and enlisted is almost nonexistent.”

I am not saying this about you, Skypilot, but I do believe lots of Freepers are naive about the degree of conservatism in the military. I'm pinging a couple of Freepers who I think might have more insight than I do, and I'd like to hear their comments. (Diamond, you're getting pinged based on your PCA connections — I thought my comments about young evangelicals coming back to cause problems in their churches after going to elite colleges might resonate with you, given current problems in the PCA.)

Skypilot, I'm not disagreeing with your point in general, but there are important exceptions among the career military officers, especially those who have many generations of military service in which they were taught not to be “political.”

I'm thinking right now of several white officers at the O-5 level and above who, if it were not for their uniforms, would be easily confused for the typical graduate of Ivy League masters degree programs — degrees which they hold in addition to their Army War College degrees or other masters degrees. When the military sends young officers to graduate school, sometimes their civilian graduate school education has a bad effect on them. A person who is raised in a traditional conservative family, goes to an ROTC program at a fairly conservative civilian school or a military academy, serves several years in uniform, and then goes to Columbia or Harvard or Yale is not necessarily well-equipped to argue back with a liberal professor. Teaching military personnel to question authority is not necessarily the highest priority apart from extreme situations of illegal orders.

(Side point: this isn't just a problem in the military. I see the same problem in conservative Christian circles as well. Far too many young Christians get sent off to Ivy League schools by parents who have left them woefully unprepared in the key skills of how to argue respectfully with a person in authority. I personally know far too many graduates of Ivy League colleges who have either left the church, or worse yet, have come back home and started causing problems in their evangelical churches.)

I can also think of some E-8s and E-9s in that category, though senior enlisted Democrats are a lot rarer than senior officer Democrats.

The good thing is that of the people I know who are left-of-center in senior military positions, nearly all have a core ideology which can be described as a Wilsonian “make the world safe for democracy” model. That is not all bad; at least they are strongly pro-American and believe America has something to offer the world. They are realistic enough to understand that good intentions, if not backed up by force, are irrelevant. They tend to like Hillary Clinton a lot more than Barack Obama because they believe, and believe with good reason, that while Obama is largely ignorant about the military, Hillary Clinton's core ideology of feminism is virulently hostile to the Islamofascist attacks on women's rights and she wants to see a liberal version of “Americanism” spread throughout the Third World. People have degrees of badness, and Obama is considerably worse than a lot of other Democrats.

None of them men I'm thinking of would be known to the vast majority of Freepers. They're not upper-level Pentagon officials; they are senior officers responsible more for implementing than for creating policies, or retired military personnel who now work in civil service. But to cite a name which will be known, men like Gen. Wesley Clark, a longtime friend of the Clintons, are not unique at the upper levels of the Armed Forces.

On the other hand, most black conservatives I know fall into one or more of the following three categories, and often all three:

1) conservative Christians who can't tolerate homosexuality or abortion,
2) owners of small businesses, or
3) military veterans.

The bottom line is we can't assume the military is uniformly conservative. It is not. It is, however, predominantly conservative, and that is a good thing.

There is some truth to what you posted. I did not mean to imply that I have never met, or do not know, any military (active duty or retired) who are Democrats! I know a lot of them. Moreover, they seem to be more numerous than they used to.

Let me put it another way: among African-American enlisted and officers I have come across, they follow the "95%" support of Obama completely that mirrors what polls tell us about the African-American population in the US. I even know some African-American enlisted who are outwardly very Christian in their demeanor (they will utter "Praise Jesus" several times a day), yet they are completely, utterly devoted to Obama.

Right now, I am picturing prominent officers I know who are staunch Democrats. One is a lesbian Colonel, one is a practicing Wiccan, and one will tell you proudly about her past abortions. So, I don't know if stereotypes or demographics are at work here, but that is my experience.

One gentleman that I know really disapointed me. He is a fine man, a former Marine, and a retired policeman. I have attended Bible study with him. Before study one day, some fo the men were discussing Obama's latest outrage. The man reacted angrily, and said everyone should "Just give him a chance." I have learned that race is a very, very powerful identifier. I don't believe that my friend is not a true Christian, but I do believe that he cannot get beyond the powerful cultural and racial forces that he sees in others, but cannot see in himself.

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