apsies: Archive

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And then there are the reported terms of the deal, which amount to an abject surrender on the part of the president. First, there will be big spending cuts, with no increase in revenue. Then a panel will make recommendations for further deficit reduction — and if these recommendations aren’t accepted, there will be more spending cuts.

Republicans will supposedly have an incentive to make concessions the next time around, because defense spending will be among the areas cut. But the G.O.P. has just demonstrated its willingness to risk financial collapse unless it gets everything its most extreme members want. Why expect it to be more reasonable in the next round?

In fact, Republicans will surely be emboldened by the way Mr. Obama keeps folding in the face of their threats. He surrendered last December, extending all the Bush tax cuts; he surrendered in the spring when they threatened to shut down the government; and he has now surrendered on a grand scale to raw extortion over the debt ceiling. Maybe it’s just me, but I see a pattern here.

Did the president have any alternative this time around? Yes.

” —

Paul Krugman, The President Surrenders - NYTimes

“Huge win for Obama: Across the board spending cuts in trigger would not take effect until 2013 — when Bush tax cuts expire.” - @StevenTDennis

Krugman writes that Obama “surrendered last December.” But as I wrote here, Obama was the clear winner during that lame duck session. And it took some time for that to become the consensus. Steven Dennis’ tweet might be an early indication that the negative reaction to Obama’s seeming capitulation could be overstated. It might be a good idea to wait a day, week or probably much longer to lay judgment.

(via brooklynmutt)

Jul 31, 201128 notes

Jul 31, 201131 notes

"Anyone who claims we don’t have class warfare in this country is either naïve or winning."

thepoliticalpartygirl:

- Meg, of Cognitive Dissonance

Jul 31, 2011628 notes

“If my fellow Democrats and all those progressives wanted to govern without having to make big compromises, then they should have focused their energies last year on winning the House again. Instead, they spent a lot of time complaining that the Affordable Care Act didn’t have a public option. They made that the hill they wanted to die on and when they lost that fight, they left the battle.” —Clinton Counterfactuals | Talking Points Memo

Jul 31, 201136 notes

Jul 31, 201184 notes

“Basically the Republicans said we’ll blow up the world economy unless you give us exactly what we want, and the President said OK. That’s what happened… . We’re having a debate in Washington which is all about, ‘we’re going to make this economy worse, but are we going to make it worse on 90% of the Republican’s terms or 100% of the Republican’s terms?’ And the answer is 100%.” —Paul Krugman: GOP Said We’ll Blow Up Economy Unless You Do What We Want And Obama Said OK - Electzu via ABC’s ‘This Week’ (via brooklynmutt)

Jul 31, 2011253 notes

“Political candidates have to learn how to speak Christian to win elections, says Bill Leonard, a professor of church history at Wake Forest University’s School of Divinity in North Carolina. One of our greatest presidents learned this early in his career. Abraham Lincoln was running for Congress when his opponent accused him of not being a Christian. Lincoln often referred to the Bible in his speeches, but he never joined a church or said he was born again like his congressional opponent, Leonard says. “Lincoln was less specific about his own experience and, while he used biblical language, it was less distinctively Christian or conversionistic than many of the evangelical preachers thought it should be,” Leonard says. Lincoln won that congressional election, but the accusation stuck with him until his death, Leonard says. One recent president, though, knew how to speak Christian fluently. During his 2003 State of the Union address, George W. Bush baffled some listeners when he declared that there was “wonder-working power” in the goodness of American people. Evangelical ears, though, perked up at that phrase. It was an evangelical favorite, drawn from a popular 19th century revival hymn about the wonder-working power of Christ called “In the Precious Blood of the Lamb.” Leonard says Bush was sending a coded message to evangelical voters: I’m one of you. “The code says that one: I’m inside the community. And two: These are the linguistic ways that I show I believe what is required of me,” Leonard says.” —Do you speak Christian? – CNN Belief Blog - CNN.com Blogs

Jul 31, 201124 notes

Jul 31, 2011178 notes

“Monthly budgets might take a hit. To avoid a default, the Treasury would have to conserve cash and prioritize its payments, endangering the estimated 80 million checks the government pays each month, including 56 million to Social Security beneficiaries and 8.3 million to disabled citizens. That means the elderly and the disabled could feel the pinch, as could anyone else counting on the government for unemployment assistance, food stamps or other benefits.” —U.S. default could deliver swift hit to consumers - The Washington Post

Jul 31, 20115 notes

Jul 30, 2011-1 notes

Play

Jul 30, 2011305 notes

“The rhetoric in 1860, as now, was essentially about throwing off the burden of federal authority, getting rid of the tariffs and taxes Washington imposed, and protecting private property from the depredations of central government. There was one essential difference back then, of course: the private property in question in 1860 was human. But the fire-eaters of the Old South never put the emphasis on “human,” they always put it on “property,” and they pointed to their (white man’s) rights enshrined in Article I, Article IV, and the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which declared no person can be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” If this meant, perversely, that human chattel who were not considered persons could be torn away from their families, beaten, raped, and killed at the whim of their owners, and often were, that was less important to the secessionists than a strict interpretation of America’s founding document. They might have talked about states’ rights and the right to liberty, and many did then, as many do now, but the core freedom defended by those activists of 1860 was the freedom to enslave black people and to spread their racist system of forced labor across the continent.” —Rhetorical Parallels Between Lincoln, Obama - The Daily Beast

Jul 30, 20117 notes

“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect, and defend it.” I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” —Abraham Lincoln: First Inaugural Address

Jul 30, 201112 notes

Jul 30, 201173,698 notes

Jul 30, 201115 notes

Jul 30, 20119 notes

“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)… There are just some kind of men who - who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.” —Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

Jul 30, 2011927 notes

“The military budget is not on the table. The military budget is at the table – and it is eating everybody else’s lunch.” —

Rep. Barney Frank, (D-MA) (via drwh0)

The Military Budget is such a tool. (via glossylalia)

Jul 29, 2011430 notes

Jul 29, 201110 notes

Because it's been one of those days

My mother just talked my way out of a ticket for running a yellow light by citing my bad day at work, distress over the economy, and my student loan payments. I knew my astronomical debt would someday work in my favor.

The officer was going to cite me on a bogus seatbelt charge despite the fact that I was WEARING MY BELT because he’d already called in a traffic violation. Wisely he figured out he couldn’t cite me on bogus charges without facing the wrath of my 100 pound spitfire of a mother so he let me off the hook completely.

I’ve never witnessed someone finagle their way out of a ticket with such finesse.

Jul 29, 201135 notes

apsies

August 2011

July 2011