Good Speech

Heard the President's speech tonight, while working out at the gym.

Leaving out any of the accumulated baggage, and forgetting for the moment about the last two and half years?  It was a good speech. A damned good speech.  A GREAT speech, even. Diplomatic, yet pointed. Practical but passionate.  Statesmanlike, but also partisan the best possible way: He called out Republicans mainly by reminding them of the truly great things that they once stood for.  He made the case for eliminating the Bush tax breaks for the richest Americans, pointing out that it's not partisan, nor is it class warfare, but rather a case of simple math.  He pointed out that the proposals in his Jobs Plan are (again) things that Republicans and Democrats alike believe in. And yet, this time his calls for bi-partisan action came off not as him being weak, but rather as him shaming Republicans, and managing to do so without sounding preachy! Tonight he had strength. Tonight, he had spirit! THIS was the man I voted for!  (I don't know where he's been for th past two and ahlf years, but... I'll get to that.)

It came as no surprise that there were several moments where the Left Side of the chamber was brought to their feet.   What DID surprise me were the numerous times that two or three on the Right side of the chamber had the courage to stand up as well.  And one time (not including when he was finished (LOL)), he had the entire chamber on its feet.

Save for one man...

And that might have been the best part of the whole speech: Watching that great, bronzed cocksucker Speaker John Boehner twisting uncomfortably in his seat the entire time, looking like he had a bad case of hemorrhoids throughout the whole address, and KNOWING that Obama was winning with his audience...

...And I don't mean his audience in the chamber.

Remember that whole, stupid pissing match they got into over whether the speech was going to be last night or tonight?  Well... Obama looked weak (again) and Bohener looked like a dick (again) over the whole stupid thing. But they way it worked out? Most anyone who would have thought it was to the Coppertone Man's credit that he was sitting on his ass all night, looking like a fool?  WERE THEMSELVES MOST LIKELY OFF WATCHING FOOTBALL!!!  The people most likely to have seen John Boehner looking like he was sitting in a chair that someone had peed in beforehand were the ones most likely to hate him for it!

So top marks...

...for the speech.

We'll see (and more likely, we won't) if this translates into action. 

And once again, we are reminded of what ClassicLiberal so aptly refers to as "the tragedy of Obama."

Because, Mister Presdient, the time to put your boot-heel to the necks of the Conservative movement was just over two and a half years ago. The opportunity to suffocate the life out of the Right, turn this country around and start moving FOREWORD again was handed to you 32 months ago on a polished silver platter and you squandered it.  And perhaps the greatest example of why he has failed, and why this too will also likely fail was offered by Orrin Hatch beforehand:

“If (the payroll tax cut) is standing alone, I think that might have some success,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. “If it's lumped in with a whole bunch of big spending programs that builds Washington at the expense of the rest of the economy he’s not going to have much support from me or any other Republican.”

In other words:

"We'll take whatever you're going to give us for free, but don't expect anything in return."

And that's the rub isn't it? That has been the issue fro day number one - though I've never heard any Republican say it quite this plainly...

...Oh wait, YES I HAVE!

"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

Sen. Minority Leader Micth McConnell, October 25th, 2010

And AGAIN...

 “Well that is true, [making Obama a one-term President is] my single most important political goal along with every active Republican in the country."

Sen. Minority Leader Micth McConnell, July 10th, 2011 

Mister Obama, they will NOT stop playing politics, for the simple reason that they want you to fail  more than they want the COUNTRY TO SUCCEED.  You will never have their support.  You will never see anything from these traitorous scumbags other than their best efforts to sabotage your Presdiency, and progressive politics by extension (even though you haven't actually ever USED any). They will never be honest. They will never do right.   They will never stop trying to make you fail, and no sacrifice is too great for them! 

And I don't think it's all about race.  In fact, I don't think it's about race at all.

Their behavior over the past two years is because they recognized the threat to their party's future and to their entire philosophy that you and your popularity represented.

The tragedy here is that YOU never recognized the threat that THEY represented to you, to your presidency and to your country!

Still...

I won't have it be said that I don't give credit where I think it's due.

It was a good speech.

The New "Deal"

So we’ve got a deal. (I guess. We'll see.)


And that’s good (I guess, we'll see) because I was planning out a “well, it was fun while lasted” -type post, lamenting our fall from our status as a great nation, and our new status as the trailer-park dead-beats of the world; basically the same kind of gun-toting, homophobic white-trash who don’t pay their bills that the Republicans rely on to get elected year in and year out. And I’m forced to wonder what the drama was all about. Apparently taxes aren’t going up – for anyone – and Social Security and Medicare are also safe - for now. A trillion in cuts over ten years is (apparently) planned, but I’ve heard that before. That’s theatre, nothing more. Seeing as how likely it is that some those cuts will have to implemented during a Republican Administration (either 2, 4 or 8 years from now) and given the Republicans propensity to complete forget about their fiscal principles of austerity and small government whenever they win the Presidency, I’ll believe it when I see it.

I’m also wondering what this new deficit commission will be able to do that the last 37 have not.

Whatever.

At the end of the day it was much ado about nothing on a tragically Shakespearean level. At the end of the day congress raised the debt ceiling, just like they did 11 times for Reagan, 7 times for Bush, and 74 times (if I'm counting right) since 1962 with nary a whimper. Not that the American public ever heard ANYTHING about ANY of those times – didn’t even know they HAPPENED – because, as Dick Cheney pointed out: Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter! (Yeah: WHEN YOU’RE A REPUBLICAN!)

And to think: Joe Lieberman was concerned that the cuts would affect defense too deeply!

*sigh*

That’s what you get when a Democrat thinks he’s a Republican. (Or is it the other way around?)

A Country facing default, Social Security and Medicare being threatened, deficits that are going out of control…

And he’s worried about defense spending that is currently double that of Russia, China, England and France COMBINED.

We’ll be safe, Joe. You great coward.

And what about the raw, naked, rampant, partisan, ROOTING FOR FAILURE on the part of the right here? I never put any amount of hypocrisy or unprincipled behavior past the right, but I truly never expected it would reach such absurdly transparent levels. And yet somehow? ONLY 60% of America is against the Republicans right now! I mean… THEY WERE LOSING SUPPORT OF BUSINESS LEADERS, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! If BUSINESS LEADERS aren’t behind them, then WHO THE HELL IS?!

It’s insane.

My favorite – and one of the best examples of just how ignorant the average right-winger IS when it comes to all thins fiscal, monetary and economic – was probably Fox's Stuart Varney "Absolutely" agreeing with Andrew Napolitano that we don't deserve AAA Credit Rating as a nation.


Wow.

Way to hate your country there, Start! Can you IMAGINE what they’d be saying if a progressive had said ANYTHING even remotely like that?!

But here’s the thing…

A country’s credit rating is not based on its debt levels. Nor is it based on its economy. Nor is it based on their ability to balance a budget. All of those things (debt level, income, spending decisions) are what an INDIVIDUAL’s or a COMPANY’s credit rating is based on. But in a GOVERNEMENT’s credit rating, except in circumstances far more extreme than we’re facing now and likely will ever face, almost none of those things matter in the least. Why? Because Governments can do something that individuals and even companies CAN’T do when the cost of their debt gets too high.

RAISE TAXES.

Governments can RAISE TAXES! Individuals can’t do that! Companies can’t do that! And that’s why individuals and companies have to act very cautiously and very deliberately to maintain their good ratings. But governments? Can run deficits year an and year out, and have multi-years recessions and still have a AAA rating. And the reason is that, if they need to, they can RAISE TAXES to pay back their debts!

Now, in the mind of someone for whom that is simply unthinkable, I suppose I can see why they be panicking about our fiscal condition. But the only Government who DOESN’T deserve a AAA rating? Is one that is either unable or unwilling to raise taxes. If your population already pays an average 90% tax rate, and you’re still running up insane debts? FINE. YOU aren’t a AAA credit risk. If you raise taxes but (like Greece) have a national culture that simply doesn’t pay them anyway, as a point of pride, and in addition have lax enforcement existing of Tax laws? Then, yeah, you DEFINITELY don’t deserve a AAA rating. And, I guess, if you’re the kind of government that the average Fox viewer would be happy with – one that would never, under any circumstances, raising taxes including when their facing DEFAULT?

There’s no fucking way I’m buying your bonds!

Why would I?

You’d rather default than pay your bills? That’s not AAA! That’s TRAILER-PARK, DEAD-BEAT status!

But, maybe, just maybe, America will wise up to these hypocritical, self-righteous, uneducated, treasonous, traitorous, un-American SCUMBAGS on the Right is they keep routing for failure. It’s not likely, but I can dream, can’t I?

----------------------------------

(BTW… If I was more of conspiracy-minded person, I’d swear that this debt-ceiling “crisis” was cooked up just to bump the story Ruppert Murdoch’s criminal phone-hacking scandal off of the front page. Get us to forget about that. I don’t REALLY believe that, but it’s been a week or two since I’ve heard dick about it. Just sayin’.)

Four Levels of Conservative Reasoning

This week has had something in common with pretty much EVERY week since 1/20/09: Just when we think Rush Limbaugh can't stoop any lower or Glen Beck can't possibly get any more insane, the Right once again prooves us wrong, and shames us for underestimating them so.  At first, I was thinking that the lies, spin, slander and insanity that's come out in the past week (too much to even elaborate on - check out MMFA, and pick ANY ITEM at random for a perfect example) was somehow unique, somehow WORSE than it's ever been.  THEN I realized just how often it was that I've felt that way over the past 18 months!

So to help anyone out who just can't understand it anymore, I've identified four degrees of conservative reasoning.  Four levels that can help you gauge the exact level of insanity we've reached on any given issue or discussion...

Level One: Bill O’Rielly / John Boehner - Mitch McConnell

Person A tries to argue a conservative position. Person B refutes their argument with facts, research, evidence, reason and logic.

The liberal concludes that person A is wrong.

The conservative concludes that person B is liberal.


Level Two: Sean Hannity / Trent Lott - Tom DeLay

Person A, in attempting to defend the conservative position, is caught in a demonstrable lie by person B.

The liberal concludes that, as the argument was predicated on a falsehood, person A must be wrong.

The conservative concludes that since person A is conservative, person B must be wrong.


Level Three: Rush Limbaugh / James Inhofe - Jim Bunning

Person B further presents person A with strong, scientific evidence that his (conservative) position is wrong.

The liberal concludes that the conservative position is weak because it’s not supported by evidence

The conservative concludes that the evidence is weak, since it doesn’t support the conservative position.


Level 4: Glenn Beck / Michelle Bachman - Sarah Palin

Person A continues to spout falsehoods and starts displaying hypocritical, faux outrage over non-stories, made up allegations and paranoid nonsense. Person B continues to demonstrate that each point, in turn is becoming increasingly desperate and absurd.

The liberal wonders why anyone is still listening to person A.

The conservative wonders why person B hates his country so much.