The Journal apparently had agreed to embargo a story of the background behind the cliff's inner workings until after the final plan was agreed to, but decided to report on it immediately
What the republicans and their supporters don't understand is that Obama is playing them as if they are opponents in a "playground basketball game" where intimidation, trash talking, humiliation, and below the belt blows are the predominant rap of the winning team
Nothing better demonstrates this simple analysis than the following quote:
"At one point, according to notes taken by a participant, Mr. Boehner told the president, "I put $800 billion [in tax revenue] on the table. What do I get for that?" "You get nothing," the president said. "I get that for free."
Whether Obama likes or dislikes Boehner, Boehner still is the "speaker of the house" not simply a rookie player
Its hard to believe that a country with such impact on the worlds economy as the USA, would be so disorganized that no one has a clue how to plan for 2013 from any professional or personal investment point of view...
But if the Republicans want to play their own version of 'playground basketball' they can easily attack Obama's economic policies with a refusal to increase the Debt Ceiling.
it takes heroes to do that...and right now its hard to find any heroes among their ranks
In sum, it appears that senate lobbyists theorize a three or six month roll is still on the table with the exception of Estate Taxation which would revert to Clinton era levels.
But back door threats that started with U S Supreme Court in Obama's first "state of the union" haven't been hollow if one considers how easy it was to roll Chief Justice Roberts...
We have never been impressed with Boehner or how easily he could be rolled by Obama with the same ease
You have a President who is deficit spending three billion dollars a day, obstructs virtually every effort for spending cuts, screams for higher taxes knowing full well that taxes will not only fail to solve the deficits but will worsen them, and this is what passes for leadership in America today. Its not leadership, it is pathology.
Patrick Henry is dead.
We have only Henriettas in his place.
Addison Graves “Joe” Wilson, Sr.
What Boner should have done:
Looked obumbler in the eye and said:
“Look, kid. You have a long 4 years ahead of you and a lot of appropriations for your pet projects that the general public has no interest in, one way or the other. Keep giving us a hard time on taxes and the next 4 years is going to become very difficult for you.”
But that would take balls. He doesn’t have them.
The courage of a man is not how he deals with his subordinates, but rather how he deals with his equals and his superiors.
“I put $800 billion [in tax revenue] on the table. What do I get for that?” “You get nothing,” the president said. “I get that for free.”>>>>>>>>>>>>
Boehner is learning from Obama , instead of the writings of Winston Churchill, that one cannot negotiate with a fascist.
We need a Speaker of the House who does not need on the job training.
It’s worse. Obama is very successfully using Alinsky techniques to completely unravel the Republican Party to the point of not just destroying the party, but convincing it to commit suicide.
Criminals/socialists/totalitarians get everything for "free". That's how they roll...over all of us.
"Socialism Is Legal Plunder" - Frederic Bastiat
Heroes? There is ZERO "representation" to stop the plunder. We are being triangulated by totalitarians.
--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
(repost from another thread)
We aren’t even facing the basic conflict.
Democrats are all about hate and class warfare. They don’t give a rat’s patoot about the country, the economy, or anything else. Just punish the Kulaks and take what they want for themselves. Rinse and repeat.
We are all about growth. That is why we try to defend lower tax burdens for all, including the wealthy, because that’s where a lot of growth comes from. When there is growth, there is more of everything for everyone, and a way forward toward balancing the budget and a better future.
The conflict has gone right by us. We are negotiating with an adversary about what we think are economic goals we share, in order to avoid hardship and destruction. But the reality is that is exactly what these people want, a destroyed United States.
Unless and until our side starts to get honest, and accuse the president of desiring to destroy capitalism and of being a champion of communism, WE HAVE NOTHING. You can’t win the class warfare argument defending tax cuts for the wealthy. It’s not an argument we should even be having. A majority of the voters are now useful idiots that hate capitalism, the press is entirely dominated by bolsheviks, and the administration is full of true believer communists. We need to identify our enemy, establish why it is universally repugnant and evil, and connect them to it. The people must be made aware of the world view that these people share, and how it is not their world view. It is a simple matter to connect Obama and each of his advisers, appointees, czars, and friends through ACORN to SDS to Alinsky to Gramsci to Karl Marx.
How about at one of these meetings with the president, our guy asks him what he thinks of Saul Alinsky and has he read his works? Is he aware that Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer? As a supposed Christian, I assume you know who Lucifer is?
Ask him a question that appears in the test for citizenship. What type of economic system we have in the United States? Ask him to compare and contrast socialism and capitalism and to defend capitalism as BETTER.
Ask him to his face if he knows that Frank Marshall Davis, his “mentor”, was a card carrying communist who despised this country and wrote pro Stalin soviet propaganda?
As far as I can tell, no one has asked Obama to his face to give an account for his world view.
Back to the economy and the “fiscal cliff”. There isn’t going to be any significant economic growth because communists are destroying the country, and growth is anathema to them. There aren’t going to be any budget cuts because communists are destroying the country and they want MORE debt, not less.
Ideas and elections have consequences. All we have left is the truth, and that is that Obama is an ideological COMMUNIST and is doing what communists do.
I don’t buy the meme that America has shifted to a left-of-center country. I’m still convinced that conservative beliefs are widespread and popular.
We are Taxed Enough Already and we don’t want tax rate increases for anybody, even the rich. Plan B was a mistake and the conservatives in the House saw it as such and acted accordingly. Bully for them! To hell with the class warfare and Communist rhetoric.
Now those same conservatives need to raise hell. Make some noise! Nominate Allen West, or Louie Gomert as speaker!
Of course, it would help if we had a conservative news outlet to get the word out. Fox has faded and is now moderate, which is still an improvement over the leftist MSM but hardly a conservative trumpet. Instead of giving millions to spineless GOP candidates, maybe Adelson, the Koch brothers and others could put that money into starting a REAL conservative TV station.
The left will scream, but what else is new?
The 25 or so conservatives who stood up to Bonehead and Cantor and
McCarthy threats are my heros. It would have been a lot easier had they
thrown in the towel and tossed their principals aside. After all, The DC Party
have done their best to corrupt them from the moment they arrived in DC.
God bless them all. And the corrupt GOP leadership? They can take their
sorry a$$es, along with their K-Street Money Changer friends including Trent Lott
and go straight to hell.
It’s a silly proposition to start with.
It’s really only a matter of degrees as to the difference between the Repubs’ and Democrats’ headlong rush to consign the Constitution to the ash heap of history.
Have their souls been purchased by Satan?
Are There Any Heroes Left in the Republican Party ?
Where were you when the GOP-e undermined, lambasted and chased off every conservative party member?
It seems to me that Obama wants to force us to shut the government down by refusing to lift the debt ceiling.
I wonder if he thinks that he will then use an executive order to continue government operations and override the congress. The supreme court will be overridden also as necessary for the good of the country.
He can then dispense with the annoying separation of powers theories.
That isn't a check you all send to the IRS in April.
That's your white flag of unconditional surrender.
If anybody finds one PLEASE let us know.
Way back, b4 WWII, a visiting official asked (regarding Chesty Puller) how many more the Marine Corps had like him?
The reply was quick and short...One! Just the one!
Likewise, the R party had only one...Dr Ron Paul, just The One!
Semper Watching!
Gunny G
1952—’72
*****
No disrespect, simply the truth. The Libs do not fear Palin now, the way they did when they believed she might run for the presidency.
Hardly!
Both the Speaker's and the President's words insult the memory of the Framers of America's Constitution.
Consider that Constitution's purpose, as stated in its Preamble:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
James Madison, known as the "Father" of the Constitution, in commenting on the French Declaration of Rights, said of the American philosophy:
"It will be remembered that a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles, is solemnly enjoined by most of the state constitutions, and particularly by our own, as a necessary safeguard against the danger of degeneracy to which republics are liable. . . . The authority of constitutions over governments, and of the sovereignty of the people over constitutions, are truths which are at all times necessary to be kept in mind; and at no time perhaps more necessary than at the present."
Then, we read the reported exchange between the Speaker of "the People's" House of Representatives and the President of the United States in 2012, which, instead of sounding like statesmen who took a solemn Oath to uphold the Constitution's protections for individual liberty, sound like actors in a third-rate movie about petty crime:
"At one point, according to notes taken by a participant, Mr. Boehner told the president, "I put $800 billion [in tax revenue] on the table. What do I get for that?" "You get nothing," the president said. "I get that for free."Contrast their shallow and self-centered words with the depth of thought and seriousness of national purpose exhibited by the following quotations:
"It has been urged and echoed, that the power 'to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States,' amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defence or general welfare...But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon?...For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor more common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which...we must take the liberty of supposing had not its origin (with the authors of the Constitution)." -James Madison-Federalist No. 41"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy." - Thomas Jefferson
"The Utopian schemes of leveling [redistribution of wealth] and a community of goods [common ownership], are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the Crown. [These ideas] are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government, unconstitutional." - Samuel Adams
"I think myself, that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." - Thomas Jefferson
"Economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burdened, I deem (one of the) essential principles of our government and, consequently (one) which ought to shape its administrations." - Thomas Jefferson-First Inaugural
"I am not among those who fear the people. They...are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds...our people...must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they (the British) now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers....This example reads to us the salutary lesson that private fortunes are destroyed by public, as well as by private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from the principle in one instance, becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the 'bellum omnium in omnia,' which some philosophers...have mistaken for the natural, instead of the abusive, state of man. And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." - Thomas Jefferson
"I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse." - James Madison
"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale....We shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves...." - Thomas Jefferson
"The interest of the national debt [in England] is now equal to such a portion of the profits of all the land and the labor of the island, as not to leave enough for the subsistence of those who labor. Hence the owners of the land abandon it and retire to other countries, and the laborer has not enough of his earnings left to him to cover his back and to fill his belly....The landholder has nothing of his own to give; he is but the fiduciary of those who have lent him money; the lender is so taxed in his meat, drink, and clothing, that he has but a bare subsistence left." - Thomas Jefferson
"I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing." - Thomas Jefferson-1798
"...it is no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation...The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of a free society. And yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success." - Abraham Lincoln