How Did Washington Get Pushed So Far Towards the Crazy Right?

[Ste 6]

Take a tour of a US prison. What you just posted is pretty much what a prison here is. Now what does the word illegal mean to you?

There's upholding the law and then there's 1984.

Hey, that rhymes!

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

There's upholding the law and then there's 1984.

Hey, that rhymes!

If your referring to George Orwell's book "1984"...there's no comparison. They need to be stopped, and the ones here need to go. End of story.

[Niels Bohr 72]

Is it illegal for smoke dope?

[dalegg 143]

I think Obama made an enormous mistake by concentrating on his health care plan when he did. That whole debate gave rise to the Tea Party and to the Republicans taking over the house.

The biggest problem the U.S was and is facing is not healthcare, it's the economy. Some will argue that they go hand in hand, but the immediate problem is revenue vs spending from the government.

Obama should have used the time he had free will, before the Republicans took over, to change the tax system to meet his economic plan. It's possible that so many people wouldn't have become radicalized if they saw that there own tax rates didn't get worse.

[rsn 135]

I think Obama made an enormous mistake by concentrating on his health care plan when he did. That whole debate gave rise to the Tea Party and to the Republicans taking over the house.

The biggest problem the U.S was and is facing is not healthcare, it's the economy. Some will argue that they go hand in hand, but the immediate problem is revenue vs spending from the government.

Obama should have used the time he had free will, before the Republicans took over, to change the tax system to meet his economic plan. It's possible that so many people wouldn't have become radicalized if they saw that there own tax rates didn't get worse.

I couldn't agree more. I personally voted for Obama. However, that was a regrettable mistake, due to (among other things) the healthcare debacle.

[scandal 951]

I think Obama made an enormous mistake by concentrating on his health care plan when he did. That whole debate gave rise to the Tea Party and to the Republicans taking over the house.

The biggest problem the U.S was and is facing is not healthcare, it's the economy. Some will argue that they go hand in hand, but the immediate problem is revenue vs spending from the government.

Obama should have used the time he had free will, before the Republicans took over, to change the tax system to meet his economic plan. It's possible that so many people wouldn't have become radicalized if they saw that there own tax rates didn't get worse.

I agree as well. I think that 10-20 years down the road, when the history books of the era are written, the historical conclusion will be along these lines. Obama was swept into office with a substantial mandate and expectations for change. He had the chance for a big program. We were in the midst of a huge economic crisis which he did address but not with 100% effort. He wound up spending much of his political capital on healthcare and in hindsight that appears to have been a hugely costly political miscalculation. Had he championed budgetary reform during that period, who knows how things might have turned out differently? Perhaps with a win on the budget in 2009/2010, he would have been able to turn to other topics such as healthcare or immigration reform in 2011 and gotten another big win or two leading into 2012. I think he made a classic newbie mistake in choosing his agenda topics, one that comes from his never having held Executive office. It's a good case for why the best Presidents are typically former Governors, not former Senators.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Sorry, Stevie. Articles like this can't train me to hate the GOP more than the Democrats. I hate them both with equal fervor. They are both ruining this country and they both need to wise up, and wise up fast.

[Pooky 3,343]

Apparently, times change.

November 2008 link

November 2008 link

May 2009 link

Funny how the apparent seismic shift coincides with the triple play of Pelosi, Reid and Obama having their (mostly) unopposable run at governing the country without the GOP. Seems that absence makes the heart of America grow fonder.

It would be interesting to see how the country would react if there were a viable alternative to the current Democrat/Republican Washington political machine.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I think Obama made an enormous mistake by concentrating on his health care plan when he did. That whole debate gave rise to the Tea Party and to the Republicans taking over the house.

The biggest problem the U.S was and is facing is not healthcare, it's the economy. Some will argue that they go hand in hand, but the immediate problem is revenue vs spending from the government.

Obama should have used the time he had free will, before the Republicans took over, to change the tax system to meet his economic plan. It's possible that so many people wouldn't have become radicalized if they saw that there own tax rates didn't get worse.

In hindsight, it sure appears that way. But looking back, it was the Stimulus that he got through Congress and he got all that he was going to get in terms of job stimulus spending. I'm not sure what else he could have done at that point. Where I think he made huge mistake (which scandal pointed out in another thread), is when he negotiated extensions to the unemployed by giving the Republicans an extension on the Bush Tax Cuts. I personally am really disappointed with Obama for not being a tougher negotiator. He tends to be overly idealistic that true bipartisanship can exist when the reality is that most of it is ####### for tat. At least in today's political climate where the extremists (no compromise, no surrender) of the GOP are determined to bring government back to the stone age.

Edited August 6, 2011 by DFH

[bigdog 376]

It shouldn't be surprising to those of us who physically restrain our gag reflex and endeavour to observe or participate in the American political spectacle that a trending topic on Twitter this past weekend was the combination of a four-letter word, the word "you" and "Washington".

For a long time now, what goes on in the Beltway has ceased to serve the interests of the vast majority of Americans, in that shockingly most of us don't have weekly passes to the Creation Museum, or attend performances at the David H. Koch Theatre while monocle-clad and porting brandy snifters. But the current impasse, over an artificially created "debt ceiling" (an artifact of World War I) that's been a non-event in the past, is pushing our political culture towards what was previously reserved only for Barnum & Bailey.

It is key to note, as I did in my last column here, that the Republican Party bus is being driven by people so at odds with reality that they likely think Darwin was a character on Bewitched.

Speaker of the House John Boehner is a ribald mobster whose brain - due to his oh-so-healthy lifestyle choices - has seemingly liquefied into a thick stew of sun block and Chattanooga Chew. House Majority Leader and Whiner-in-Chief Eric Cantor has shown all the temperament of playground time at my four-year-old's pre-school, and an intellect to match.

And Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, almost literally in bondage to any corporate entity that can raise him five-figures-plus in legalised bribes we call campaign contributions, possesses such an inverted chin that I'm only left to conclude that it's a Pinocchio-mirroring act. Each time he lies to avoid responsibility for the benefit of his corporate benefactors, it retreats one inch further into his jaw.

Of course, this is what President Obama and the Democratic leadership want you to see, to obscure the fact that it is his lack of leadership and a political team that should be fit to be drawn and quartered that has empowered this clan of kooks to determine whether the US economy takes a horse and buggy ride into Clayton Ravine, dragging the world economy down with it.

There are varying theories for why President Obama always punts on first down and negotiates by handing the opposition a paddle and saying "thank you sir, may I have another". But any one of them is predicated on weakness, a man too feeble to stand up to Republicans and official Washington and do what he believes. Either that, or he is too weak of character to digest the fact that cutting taxes for billionaires while cutting Social Security cost-of-living increases for impoverished seniors is not what one might call a "moral" decision.

This is only more true when one runs a campaign during which they say, in the middle of a nationally televised debate with the opposition, "John McCain's campaign has ... suggested that the best answer to the growing pressures on Social Security might be to cut cost-of-living adjustments or raise the retirement age. I will not do either."

Or when they promise to end mammoth tax cuts for the richest of the rich, put in place by The Great Unificator - George W. Bush.

Right of Nixon

A candidate who said all that, and meant it, might have accepted a proposal by Senator McConnell to avoid any responsibility as usual by turning the debt ceiling over to Obama, allowing him to raise it without touching Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Here is what's even more maddening. When President Obama was negotiating with Republicans in December, and allowed tax-cuts-for-Kardashians to be extended, he "received" something else - something that, like raising the debt ceiling, should have simply been a given (especially during a severe economic downturn) - an unemployment benefits extension.

President Obama could also have made raising the debt ceiling a condition for that particular cave-in. He could have reminded people that during the presidency of George W. Bush, Vice President and Chief of Shooting People in the Face, ####### Cheney, remarked that "Reagan taught us that deficits don't matter".

Obama could even have informed people exactly who had created these deficits - out loud no less!

Many political commentators were already discussing this as the next big fight, knowing that the Tea Party-backed blockheads now populating Congress would go where nobody had gone before and try to take down the US economy, if only to make a point to the voices in their heads - the ones they think originate with God, but more likely are due to a daily overdose of high-fructose corn syrup and hot toddies.

But President Obama doesn't like to fight, even if it's with people who see Reagan as being somewhat of a commie liberal for raising the debt ceiling 18 times during his presidency, with no conditions ever attached to these raises. In fact, it may be Obama's seeming acceptance of a Washington-manufactured "conservative consensus" on economic issues that has led conservative scholar Bruce Bartlett, in Fiscal Times, to compare Obama's "moderate-conservative" governance with that of Richard Nixon (something he is not the first to do).

With one exception, of course. Nixon was further to the left.

So that is where we are today, with a Democratic president governing to the right of Nixon and a Republican House of Representatives governing to the right of William The Conqueror. Meanwhile, the multiple polls that show Americans want to raise taxes on the rich, protect their Social Security, and see our government act like adults are ignored.

Not too long ago, in saner times (1954, to be exact), Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in a letter to his brother Edgar, "should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labour laws and farm programmes, you would not hear of that party again in our political history". He went on to say that those who would repeal these items were "negligible and stupid".

Sadly, they are not negligible in Washington, but they most certainly are stupid. And worst of all, not only is the conservative party in this country pushing for these crazy ideas, but the liberal party has leaders willing to entertain them or, out of fear, bargain them away.

To paraphrase Simon and Garfunkel, "Where have you gone, Dwight D. Eisenhower?"

http://www.alternet....ght/#paragraph3

Quit spending, don't give money to terrorists, don't give money to oil countries, no welfare, give them a job to do instead or work for money.