Category: Barack Obama

14 September 2011, 6:24 PM

Thanks Barack

So, the Dems just lost the special election to replace Anthony Weiner, losing the Congressional district to the ‘Phants for the first time im almost 90 years. (!)

While the Democrat, David Weprin, by all accounts ran a horrible campaign, we also need to understand that that the Republicans aggressively tried to make this campaign national rather than local, and it does not bode well for keeping the White House, or the Senate, or retaking the House in 2012.

I understand that no will save it publicly, but this is not good news for Barack Obama or the Democratic party.

Unfortunately, particularly inside Obama administration’s reality distortion field, they are telling themselves that it’s not about them, and so will not learn from this.

7 September 2011, 8:26 PM

I’m Glad to Know that I am Not Alone

It appears that Matt Taibbi feels the same way:

I was in an airport in Florida yesterday and was forced into a terrible, Sophie’s Choice-type choice.

I was hours early for a flight and stuck in a relatively small terminal crammed with people. Only one area in the whole wing had empty seats; an unused gate that contained a TV blaring the CNN broadcast of Obama’s Labor Day speech at full volume.

So it was either sit underneath a full-volume broadcast of our fearless president bellowing out his latest hollow promises, or the hellish alternative: retreat to gates full of screaming five year-old children, all of them jacked up on sugar and bawling their eyes out because it was the end of Labor Day weekend and their cruel parents were dragging them home from Disneyworld.

I ended up choosing the screaming children. The one open seat in a nearby gate was next to an extended family of Indian tourists. A four year-old boy from that group wearing a cape and brandishing a plastic light saber thought it was funny when he kept saber-swiping at my knees. But sitting through that was better than having to listen to Obama drape himself in Harry Trumanisms and talk about “shared prosperity.”

The interesting thing here is that I get the sense that Taibbi actually feels a sense of betrayal, while I’ve been down on Obama since 2007, so I can’t say that he ever raised my hopes, which makes my visceral distaste for him a bit more puzzling.

22 August 2011, 6:36 PM

Obama Admin Pressuring NY AG Schneiderman to Drop Bank Investigations

We are getting leaks that the Obama administration is going full bore to prevent New York State Attorney General from doing a thorough and diligent investigation of the banksters mortgage fraud:

Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York, has come under increasing pressure from the Obama administration to drop his opposition to a wide-ranging state settlement with banks over dubious foreclosure practices, according to people briefed on discussions about the deal.

In recent weeks, Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and high-level Justice Department officials have been waging an intensifying campaign to try to persuade the attorney general to support the settlement, said the people briefed on the talks.

Mr. Schneiderman and top prosecutors in some other states have objected to the proposed settlement with major banks, saying it would restrict their ability to investigate and prosecute wrongdoing in a variety of areas, including the bundling of loans in mortgage securities.

But Mr. Donovan and others in the administration have been contacting not only Mr. Schneiderman but his allies, including consumer groups and advocates for borrowers, seeking help to secure the attorney general’s participation in the deal, these people said. One recipient described the calls from Mr. Donovan, but asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation.

So, not only are they pressuring Schneiderman, but they are trying to gin up an AstroTurf response to further intimidate him.

I’m with what Yves Smith said, “It is high time to describe the Obama Administration by its proper name: corrupt.” (emphasis mine)

What’s more, he’s also catching flack from the in the person of Kathryn Wylde, Deputy Chair of the New York Bank of the Federal Reserve, who accosted him at a memorial service

Representatives for the four big banks declined to comment. Mr. Schneiderman has also come under criticism for objecting to a settlement proposed by Bank of New York Mellon and Bank of America that would cover 530 mortgage-backed securities containing Countrywide Financial loans that investors say were mischaracterized when they were sold.

The deal would require Bank of America to pay $8.5 billion to investors holding the securities; the unpaid principal amount of the mortgages remaining in the pools totals $174 billion. Lawyers representing 22 institutional investors, including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, BlackRock and Pimco, contended that the deal was favorable.

This month, Mr. Schneiderman sued to block that deal, which had been negotiated by Bank of New York Mellon as trustee for the holders of the securities. The lawsuit contends that the deal could “compromise investors’ claims in exchange for a payment representing a fraction of the losses” experienced by investors and that it had been negotiated without the knowledge of all of the holders of the securities.

The lawsuit angered Bank of New York Mellon, and as Mr. Schneiderman was leaving the memorial service last week for Hugh Carey, the former New York governor who died Aug. 7, an attendee said Mr. Schneiderman became embroiled in a contentious conversation with Kathryn S. Wylde, a member of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York who represents the public. Ms. Wylde, who has criticized Mr. Schneiderman for bringing the lawsuit, is also chief executive of the Partnership for New York City. The New York Fed has supported the proposed $8.5 billion settlement.

Other investors in the Countrywide mortgage pools who were not part of the settlement talks between Bank of New York Mellon and Bank of America have called the terms inadequate.

Characterizing her conversation with Mr. Schneiderman that day as “not unpleasant,” Ms. Wylde said in an interview on Thursday that she had told the attorney general “it is of concern to the industry that instead of trying to facilitate resolving these issues, you seem to be throwing a wrench into it. Wall Street is our Main Street — love ’em or hate ’em. They are important and we have to make sure we are doing everything we can to support them unless they are doing something indefensible.”

(emphasis mine)

Defrauding investors and home buyers is defensible?

I’m with Barry Ritholtz, who has called for Wylds’s resignation:

If the Times report is accurate, and the quote below [it;s the last paragraph above quote] represents Ms. Wylde’s comments, than that position is a laughable mockery, and Ms. Wylde should resign effective immediately.

…………

But what is surprising is the utterly inappropriate behavior of Kathryn S. Wylde. She is not only a member of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, but occupies the seat supposedly reserved for the representing the public.

If the Times report is accurate, and the quote below represents Ms. Wylde’s comments, than that position is a laughable mockery, and Ms. Wylde should resign effective immediately.

(emphasis mine)

In any case, if you want to contact the AG and tell him not to back off, you can call (800) 771-7755 or at (212) 416-8000) or use his e-mail form.

This is particularly recommended.

BTW, if you live in Delaware, you might want to drop a dime on Beau Biden, the VP’s son, and Delaware’s AG, who has joined with Schneiderman in opposing the BoA deal.

If the Fed and the Obama administration are dead set on any sort of meaningful reform or accountability for the banks, then we need back up the State Attorneys General to pursue the banksters.

[on edit]

The AGs or Massachusetts and Nevada are also balking on the settlement offer, and considering that Nevada has probably the worst foreclosure problems in the nation, it makes any settlement even more problematic.

13 August 2011, 8:22 PM

Obama has lost Ed Shultz??

Not what I expect from Ed

Ed Schultz uses the standard cop out that Obama is “Getting bad advice”, but he’s asking “Where’s Barry?”

He notes, accurately IMNSHO, that if Obama had been involved at any level, then at least three Senators would have been unseated, not just two.

John Nichols comes on toward the end, and notes that not only was Obama AWOL on Wisconsin, but he was a regular visitor until the entire conflict developed, and then he avoided the state.

Ed Schultz is an Obama fanboi, and it’s a huge part of his brand as a broadcaster, and even he feels compelled to say, “If only the Czar knew.”

Eddie, here’s a hint: the Czar knows, and this is what he wants.

Obama’s self image, and reelection strategy, is all about his PPUS (Post Partisan Unity Schtick), because he (probably wrongly) believes that the voters will perceive his cowardice as strength, and because he is fundamentally unwilling to take any risks, or take any hits, even to the smallest degree, to support his allies.

This, by the way, is why the Democrats will lose the Senate, and not take back the House, inn 2012. Barack Obama’s intention is to strip mine the base and the party apparatus, and to hell with the party.

7 August 2011, 8:32 PM

What Bill Maher Says…

Get some spine and stop worrying about being seen as an angry black man:

6 August 2011, 8:18 PM

Talk About Damning With Faint Praise…

One of the memes about Barack Obama is that his constant capitulation and negotiating with himself is some sort of eleven dimensional chess.

I think that this is unmitigated bullsh%$, and I think that James Fallows does too, but one of his readers buys into it seriously, but turns what he considers to be a compliment into an insult by comparing Barack Obama to Chess master Bobby Fischer.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Fischer, he is a classic example of someone who by hubris and temperament destroyed himself, and whatever skills he might have had in chess, they never translated to anything useful, even before his descent into paranoia, mental illness, and bigotry.

He was a man so unpleasant, that much of the American public was rooting for the Russian when he won his Chess championship.

The reader states that, “From a political and a policy standpoint, he’s pushed the Republicans so far to the right that they are called terrorists without humor by the national media.” is so lost the alternate reality of the Obama fanboi it beggars belief.

I rather think that Fallows found this provocative, and published this even though he is dubious of this theory; he is no way a fanboi.

In any case, I look forward to reading his readers responses.

3 August 2011, 8:10 PM

I Agree With Matt Taibbi

His thesis is that Obama’s capitulation is by design, not by timidity and cowardice:

But to a bunch of hired stooges put in office to lend an air of democratic legitimacy to what has essentially become a bureaucratic-oligarchic state, what good does such advice do? Would it have made sense to send the Supreme Soviet under Andropov or Brezhnyev a list of policy ideas for enhancing the civil liberties of Soviet citizens?

The Democrats aren’t failing to stand up to Republicans and failing to enact sensible reforms that benefit the middle class because they genuinely believe there’s political hay to be made moving to the right. They’re doing it because they do not represent any actual voters. I know I’ve said this before, but they are not a progressive political party, not even secretly, deep inside. They just play one on television.

For evidence, all you have to do is look at this latest fiasco.

………

We probably need to start wondering why this keeps happening. Also, this: if the Democrats suck so bad at political combat, then how come they continue to be rewarded with such massive quantities of campaign contributions? When the final tally comes in for the 2012 presidential race, who among us wouldn’t bet that Barack Obama is going to beat his Republican opponent in the fundraising column very handily? At the very least, he won’t be out-funded, I can almost guarantee that.

And what does that mean? Who spends hundreds of millions of dollars for what looks, on the outside, like rank incompetence?

It strains the imagination to think that the country’s smartest businessmen keep paying top dollar for such lousy performance. Is it possible that by “surrendering” at the 11th hour and signing off on a deal that presages deep cuts in spending for the middle class, but avoids tax increases for the rich, Obama is doing exactly what was expected of him?

It’s a much simpler thesis than all encompassing incompetence juxtaposed with a messianic complex.

I’ve used the term “Manchurian Democrat,” but Tiabbi is a much better writer.

3 August 2011, 7:54 PM

Quote of the Day

I just realised that plenty of mainstream US Democrats, having spent the last however long castigating people to the left of them for perceiving some progressive tendencies in the government of Fidel Castro, are now reduced to supporting the re-election of a President who imprisons people without human rights in Cuba, but who has made excellent advances in the field of bringing healthcare to the poor.

—D-Squared Digest

It’s like reading The Onion. I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry, though I think that any improvements on bringing healthcare to the poor is over stated.

1 August 2011, 6:32 PM

The House Passed the Debt Deal

And about half the Democratic caucus voted for it.

Looking at the tally, my Congresscritter, Jon Sarbanes, voted against it, but Hoyer, Ruppersberger (no surprise there) and DCCC chair Van Hollen all voted for this sh%$ sandwich.

Any Democrat who votes for this deserves a primary challenge, and the fact that Van Hollen is running the DCCC means that you should not give to that organization, but instead choose your candidates a la carte, because the DCCC will continue to spend their money on spineless wimps with no moral compass.

As to the substance of the deal, words fail me, but they don’t fail the Rude Pundit (NSFW, but if you know the Rude One, you knew that).

Also, read Krugman, whose New York Times OP/ED, The President Surrenders, is a marginally more polite take down.

Me, I don’t think that Obama is as bad a negotiator as we would like to think. I think that he is getting much of what he wants, and using Boehner as a useful idiot for political cover from his own base.

30 July 2011, 9:38 PM

More Like The Bush Administration Every Day

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Case in point, punishing scientists who speak the truth even when big oil wants lies:

It was seen as one of the most distressing effects of climate change ever recorded: polar bears dying of exhaustion after being stranded between melting patches of Arctic sea ice.

But now the government scientist who first warned of the threat to polar bears in a warming Arctic has been suspended and his work put under official investigation for possible scientific misconduct.

Charles Monnett, a wildlife biologist, oversaw much of the scientific work for the government agency that has been examining drilling in the Arctic. He managed about $50m (£30.5m) in research projects.

Some question why Monnett, employed by the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, has been suspended at this moment. The Obama administration has been accused of hounding the scientist so it can open up the fragile region to drilling by Shell and other big oil companies.

“You have to wonder: this is the guy in charge of all the science in the Arctic and he is being suspended just now as an arm of the interior department is getting ready to make its decision on offshore drilling in the Arctic seas,” said Jeff Ruch, president of the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. “This is a cautionary tale with a deeply chilling message for any federal scientist who dares to publish groundbreaking research on conditions in the Arctic.”

There could be some completely innocent explanation for this, and I could be the rightful heir to the house of Saud.

I think that both are equally likely.

27 July 2011, 7:11 PM

You Have to Love the Bait and Switch that Obama Pulled on the CFPB

As you know, Barack Obama decided not to appoint Elizabeth Warren as the first head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), but instead chose to nominate their current head of enforcement, Richard Cordray, former Ohio Attorney General, who had filed lawsuits against predatory banks.

It was better than the alternative, Raj Date, but it seemed to me that it was a worthless gesture to the Republicans, since they promised to filibuster anyone, because they want the bureau gutted.

Obviously, this screams “Recess Appointment,” but Obama is having none of that, not because he’s weak, but because this creates paralysis which he can exploit to effectively make a banker the head of the agency.

Raj Date has been elevated to adviser to the Treasury secretary for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Warren’s old position, and I guarantee that there will be no pressure from the Obama to administration to get an up or down vote on Cordray.

They give a nod to the people who want the CFPB to work with their nomination, and then they put a bankster in charge of running the bureau.

Seriously, Obama has his tongue so far up the bankster’s asses that he tastes tonsils.

Who is Date? He’s the current associate director of research, markets and regulations, and he’s a f%$#ing bankster, having been the, “senior vice president for corporate strategy and development at Capital One and a managing director in the financial institutions group at Deutsche Bank.”

So now, Date can emasculate the CFPB while Cordray waits for a vote on his nomination that will never come.

25 July 2011, 9:54 PM

More Like Bush Every Day

The New York Review of Books has what can only be called an epic take-down of Barack Obama and his administration.

I really cannot do justice to the piece, you should read it, but here a re a couple of quotes:

Plouffe’s advice to the President defines not just Obama’s policies but also his behavior. Plouffe tells the President, according to this observer, that the target group wants him to seem the most reasonable man in the room. Plouffe is the conceptualizer, and Bill Daley, the chief of staff who shares Plouffe’s political outlook, makes things happen; Gene Sperling, the director of economic policy, and Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, are smart men but they come out of politics rather than academia or deep experience in their respective fields. Once Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, departs later this summer, all of the President’s original economic advisers will be gone. Partly this is because the President’s emphasis on budget cutting didn’t leave them very much to do. One White House émigré told me, “It’s not a place that welcomes ideas.”

(emphasis mine)

It sounds an awful lot like what John Dilulio characterization of the Bush Administration’s lack of a policy apparatus as, “The reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.”

Every time I hear something like this, I become increasingly convinced that there’s not a damn bit of difference between them and the Bushies.

And then I read this, and realize that there is a difference:

According to a report in The Hill newspaper in late June, the tough-minded, experienced, and blunt Democratic Representative Henry Waxman of California told Obama in a White House meeting that he’d asked several Republicans about their meeting with him the day before, and, “To a person, they said the President’s going to cave.” Then the congressman said to the President of the United States, “And if you’re going to cave, tell us right now.” The President was reported to have been displeased, and responded, “I’m the President of the United States; my words carry weight.”

Obama, while just as petulant as Shrub, lacks his guts, and everyone knows it.

Just read the whole thing. It’s very good.

20 July 2011, 6:32 PM

How is Barack Obama Different from George W. Bush?

No this is not a lead in for a joke it’s a real question because Barack “I’m Shutting Down the CIA Black Sites” Obama has set up a new CIA black site:

Nestled in a back corner of Mogadishu’s Aden Adde International Airport is a sprawling walled compound run by the Central Intelligence Agency. Set on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the facility looks like a small gated community, with more than a dozen buildings behind large protective walls and secured by guard towers at each of its four corners. Adjacent to the compound are eight large metal hangars, and the CIA has its own aircraft at the airport. The site, which airport officials and Somali intelligence sources say was completed four months ago, is guarded by Somali soldiers, but the Americans control access. At the facility, the CIA runs a counterterrorism training program for Somali intelligence agents and operatives aimed at building an indigenous strike force capable of snatch operations and targeted “combat” operations against members of Al Shabab, an Islamic militant group with close ties to Al Qaeda.

As part of its expanding counterterrorism program in Somalia, the CIA also uses a secret prison buried in the basement of Somalia’s National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters, where prisoners suspected of being Shabab members or of having links to the group are held. Some of the prisoners have been snatched off the streets of Kenya and rendered by plane to Mogadishu. While the underground prison is officially run by the Somali NSA, US intelligence personnel pay the salaries of intelligence agents and also directly interrogate prisoners. The existence of both facilities and the CIA role was uncovered by The Nation during an extensive on-the-ground investigation in Mogadishu. Among the sources who provided information for this story are senior Somali intelligence officials; senior members of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG); former prisoners held at the underground prison; and several well-connected Somali analysts and militia leaders, some of whom have worked with US agents, including those from the CIA. A US official, who confirmed the existence of both sites, told The Nation, “It makes complete sense to have a strong counterterrorism partnership” with the Somali government.

The CIA presence in Mogadishu is part of Washington’s intensifying counterterrorism focus on Somalia, which includes targeted strikes by US Special Operations forces, drone attacks and expanded surveillance operations. The US agents “are here full time,” a senior Somali intelligence official told me. At times, he said, there are as many as thirty of them in Mogadishu, but he stressed that those working with the Somali NSA do not conduct operations; rather, they advise and train Somali agents. “In this environment, it’s very tricky. They want to help us, but the situation is not allowing them to do [it] however they want. They are not in control of the politics, they are not in control of the security,” he adds. “They are not controlling the environment like Afghanistan and Iraq. In Somalia, the situation is fluid, the situation is changing, personalities changing.”

Bullsh%@.

This is not an existing state security apparatus who is doing us a favor, this the CIA, and possibly the NSA running another black site.

The “official government” in Somolia controls, “Somali government forces control roughly thirty square miles of territory in Mogadishu thanks in large part to the US-funded and -armed 9,000-member AMISOM force.”

This government controls about half the land area of Liechtenstein and that only by dint of massive foreign aid.

Seriously, what Barack Obama has done by way of the rule of law and civil rights is worse than what George W. Bush did, because he has normalized behavior, both by refusing to investigate criminality, and by aping the policies of Bush/Cheney.

…and it’s not getting any coverage by the MSM.

19 July 2011, 6:02 PM

Lucy Will Hold The Football This Time … Really

The “Gang of Six” in the Senate, it’s back:

The once moribund Senate “Gang of Six” gained new life Tuesday after Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn unexpectedly rejoined the group and President Barack Obama praised a new effort to cut the debt by as much as $3.7 trillion over the next decade.

Speaking at the White House Tuesday afternoon, Obama gave the Gang of Six a big boost, saying its proposals were “roughly” in line with his negotiations during the stalled debt-ceiling talks. But he said there would need to be broader buy-in to the proposal and he said Congress needed to have “fail-safe” plan, being drafted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, to avert a default.

“I think we’re now seeing a potential for a bipartisan consensus,” Obama told reporters.

And Obama is not just positive about this development, he is a “ferocious advocate” of capitulation masquerading as bipartisanship:

President Obama heaped praise on a deficit-reduction proposal produced by bipartisan group of senators known as the “Gang of Six,” calling it a “significant step” and arguing that members on both side of the aisle are beginning to coalesce around a balanced approach involving cuts to entitlements and tax increases.

“We’re in the same playing field and my hope is that we start gathering everybody in the next couple of days” on an agreement, Obama told reporters in a brief appearance in the White House briefing room Tuesday.

This is just pathetic.

In response to Republicans taking “a shellacking” because of their attempts to dismantle Medicare and Medicaid, Obama has signed on to a plan that calls for cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.

Yesterday’s quote of the day shines a bit more light on this problem.

Barack Obama’s fetish regarding “Responsibility without conviction,” is more than “weak”. It is in fact profoundly irresponsible.

Speaking as a parent, and someone who plays an adult on the internet, sometimes adults actually have to deal with children, and, “I’ll give you another ice cream if you stop ……… Well OK, you did not stop, but here is your ice cream anyway,” is not responsible anything.

I think the idea that Barack Obama is the responsible adult in the room is a delusion, and one that is most firmly held by one one Barack Hussein Obama.

16 July 2011, 8:03 PM

Can We Please Primary the Bastard Now?

So it appears that Barack Obama is removing Elizabeth Warren as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:

President Barack Obama has chosen a candidate other than Elizabeth Warren as director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to a person briefed on the matter.

The president’s choice is a person who already works at the consumer agency, the person said yesterday. Obama may make the nomination as soon as next week, another person briefed on the administration’s plans said.

The people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process isn’t public, didn’t name Obama’s choice.

Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard professor, was appointed last fall by Obama to set up the consumer bureau until a director was named. Warren previously was head of the congressional watchdog panel overseeing the bank bailout.

And here is the kicker:

Raj Date, a top deputy to Warren at the consumer bureau, was on a short list of candidates to become director ………

………He was senior vice president for corporate strategy and development at Capital One and a managing director in the financial institutions group at Deutsche Bank. During the debate over Dodd-Frank, Date headed the Cambridge Winter Center for Financial Institutions Policy, a research group he founded.

So he’s replacing Elizabeth Warren with a f%$#ing banker.

But in classic fashion, he’s floating out a payoff for her to keep her mouth shut until after the 2012 election, the Democratic nomination for Senate, where she would run against Scott Brown:

Elizabeth Warren’s calendar sure looks like the schedule of a woman considering a Senate bid, or at least someone being courted by power players in Massachusetts and the Senate Democrats’ campaign operation in Washington.

In recent weeks, Warren has met in person or spoke on the phone with Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, David Axelrod, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Massachusetts Democratic Reps. Barney Frank, Stephen Lynch and John Tierney. The phone call with Murray took place in early June, Roll Call has learned. Warren attended a community banking event with Tierney in the Bay State and dined with Schumer, a former DSCC chairman and an aggressive recruiter who remains involved in DSCC activities.

Warren’s May calendar, the most recently available public schedule, shows the Schumer dinner along with the other meetings and discussions.

Given that Warren is leading the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, CFPB business could, of course, have been the lone agenda item during these meetings. But for a woman some national Democrats and liberal activists are hoping will take on Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown (R) — a prime target in 2012 — her calendar alludes that she has at least been examining the possibility of a run.

So he’s putting her up to run against Scott Brown, which is a win-win for Obama.

Basically, she’s about the only person who appears to have a possibility to beat him right now, though it’s a tough row to hoe, because Brown is the consummate politician, and she isn’t.

If she wins, it’s easier to hold onto the Senate, and she gets buried as a low seniority Senator, where the old boys’ network keeps her far away from any meaningful banking regulation

If she loses, then no one could have won, and he keeps her inconvenient truths out of the press until his reelection.

12 July 2011, 6:21 PM

Obama says debt impass could stop social security checks

Talk about a Shot Across the Bow

I really don’t think that he had it in him, but Obama just fired one f%$# of a shot across the Republicans bow on the debt ceiling:

It was a striking thing today to see the President of the United States say that he cannot guarantee the 27 million Social Security checks that are due to be mailed on August 3rd.

August 3rd is the day after the U.S. government will default on its debts if Democrats and Republicans do not agree to increase the nation’s borrowing limit. Both sides say they won’t raise the limit without a deal to massively cut the federal deficit. A U.S. default could shake the world economy. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Time is growing short.

CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley met the president this morning at the White House on another day of deadlock. The question is whether a deal to cut the federal deficit will include tax increases as Democrats insist or rely only on budget cuts as Republicans demand. The Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner started the day with a vow that the house will not raise taxes – period.

You know, I really did not expect him to pull out that one.

His normal course of action is to negotiate with himself, and bring a knife to a gun fight, but he just pulled out an AN602 Tsar Bomba.

I really did not think that he had it in him.

What’s more it appears between this threat, and the fact that raising taxes by a penny will enrage the base, has Senate minority leader coming up with a Blackadderesque^* cunning plan to obscure the fact that he feels compelled to capitulate:

Desperate to get out of the political box they helped to create, Senate Republicans are actively pursuing a new plan under which the debt ceiling would grow in three increments over the remainder of this Congress unless lawmakers approve a veto-proof resolution of disapproval.

In effect lawmakers would be surrendering the very power of approval that the GOP has used to force the debt crisis now. But by taking the disapproval route, Republicans can shift the onus more onto the White House and Democrats since a two-thirds majority would be needed to stop any increase that President Barack Obama requests.

“It gives the president 100 percent of the responsibility for increasing the debt limit if he chooses not to have any spending reductions,” Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Republican Conference chairman, told reporters Tuesday.

This is the about the lamest example of “declaring victory and beating a retreat” that I have heard in a long time ………… OK, it’s the lamest example by a Republican. I think that we get this sort of sh%$ from Democrats, and in particularly the Obama administration, on an almost weekly basis.

And then we have John Boehner doing his best 13 year old throwing a tantrum:

Burned by the fact that their prescription for reducing the deficit and increasing the national borrowing limit either can’t pass in Congress or doesn’t cut spending enough to warrant, in their minds, a significant debt ceiling hike, House Republicans returned to the Capitol Tuesday to ratchet up their demands, and shirk responsibility for avoiding default.

“Where’s the President’s plan?” asked House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) at a press stakeout after a GOP caucus meeting. “When’s he going to lay his cards on the table? This debt limit increase is his problem.”

This is a massive departure for Boehner and the GOP, who before the debt limit brinksmanship became central to U.S. politics, regularly acknowledged that raising the debt limit was his, and Congress’, imperative. Today, he and other caucus leaders answered President Obama’s demand that the GOP figure out a way to raise the debt limit through 2012 by offering to toss non-starter Republican wish-list items back into the negotiating mix.

This is certainly a welcome event.

If we see more of this, then I will see it as evidence of a learning curve, but for right now, absent any sort of a pattern, I will put it down to dumb luck.

Still, it’s better to be lucky than it is to be smart in the short term.

^*Only his writing is a lot worse than the show, and Rowan Atkinson (Blackadder) has a lot more personal appeal.^†
^†Hell, Tony Robinson (Blackadder’s dogsbody, Baldrick) has more personal appeal than Mitch McConnell.

10 July 2011, 7:12 PM

This is a Righteous Rant

While I don’t agree with Riverdaughter’s suggestion that Hillary Clinton should primary Obama in 2012, Hillary is a spent force in presidential politics, but her basic thesis, that Mr. Hopey Changey is a “weak Republican in disguise,”, is one that I have maintained since October 21, 2007 (see the full story of what informed my opinion here).

I have to agree with Kevin Drum, this stuff ain’t eleventy dimensional chess. He declined to extend the debt limit, and as a result now proposes gutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, because that is what he really wants.

In any case read Riverdaughter.

7 July 2011, 6:46 PM

When I Called Him the Manchurian Democrat, I Had No Idea…

Nancy Pelosi heard that Barack Obama was looking at ~~gutting~~ cutting social security, and it sounds like her response was to call him out:

After a contentious White House meeting with President Obama and other Congressional leaders, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) returned to the Capitol and drew an important red line: Members of her caucus won’t vote for a grand bargain to raise the debt limit and reduce future deficits if the final deal includes cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits — and that means it probably won’t pass.

“You [asked], ‘could the changes compromise the vote?'” Pelosi said at a Thursday afternoon briefing near the House chamber. “I said yes.”

It’s widely believed that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) will need Democratic votes to raise the debt limit. Democratic leaders, including House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) have offered to help him out — but not on Boehner’s terms alone. Pelosi has her own terms.

“We have been very clear Democrats are not supporting — House Democrats are not supporting any cuts in benefits for Social Security or Medicare,” she said.

I think that her calling him a bitch, which is what she did, might have something to do with the fact that he gave no advanced warning of his decision to Congressional Democrats:

Multiple senior House Democratic aides tell TPM that caucus members were caught off guard by news stories about President Obama’s push for deeper deficit and spending reductions — and particularly about the White House’s willingness to cut Social Security as part of a grand bargain to raise the debt limit.

At a private caucus meeting Thursday morning, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told her members that if Obama’s serious about putting Social Security on the chopping block, he’d left her in the dark about it. And after an at-times-contentious meeting about how open Dems should be to significant entitlement cuts, leaders departed to the White House to read Obama the riot act.

And just to ensure that the day is a complete mess for Barry, his proposal to kill the New Deal and give it to the bankers was just enthusiastically endorsed by the craziest motherf%$#er in Congress, Allen West:

Reports that President Obama could discuss with Republicans the idea of cuts to Social Security and Medicare is picking up praise from a source that doesn’t usually have anything good to say about the President: Rep. Allen West (R-FL).

In fact, this is coming from a man whose military career ended after a torture-related incident, who has called Obama a “low-level socialist agitator”, and who has said that Medicare will destroy America: “I gotta tell you something: if you support Medicare the way it is now, you can kiss the United States of America goodbye.”

Seriously, when you look at how this is handled has me wondering if the production staff who created Gigli are running the White House staff.

It’s not only bad policy, it’s criminally stupid politics.

At some point, you have to start wondering if this crap is just stupid, or it’s what he really wants.