I want to watch this, but I’m really tired, and need to go to sleep. If it’s not asking too much, would you mind watching it for me, and leaving me some notes, so I know whether to be optimistic or pissed off tomorrow morning?
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Obama’s budget plan
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Didn’t apologize for being an American citizen.
(Coward)
Didn’t end all three wars.
(Broken promises)
Didn’t resign
(Lacks Nixonian prouditude)
Well, it drove someone to suicide.
http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/04/13/gwu-suicide-tragically-coincides-obama-speech
President Obama proposed trillions in new taxes to bankroll the liberal Democrats’ big government policies at a time when our economy is still struggling, gas prices are soaring and unemployment is still alarmingly high.
The tax hikes President Obama wants will only fuel Washington’s addiction to spending rather than help curb it. More importantly, they will hurt one of the strongest engines of growth and job creation in our economy: small businesses. And they will harm middle class families by taking more money from their pockets at a time when Americans need every dime to cover their expenses.
In fact, according to the Tax Foundation, Americans will pay more in taxes in 2011 than they will spend on food, clothing and housing combined — and it’s still not enough for Barack Obama.
Yes, taxes are now much lower than the were under Reagan, and we all remember how terrible the 80s were, right, EOS?
On Eve of Tax Day, Republican and Democratic Congressmembers Rally Against America’s Hard Earned Income Going to Fund the War in Afghanistan; Veterans, Other Groups to Join
Thousands of Americans Send IOUs to Washington DC Protesting the Outrageous Sums of Income Going Towards the War in Afghanistan; IOUS Part of Rethink Afghanistan Campaign
What: April 14 Press Conference
A bipartisan group of Members of Congress will be discussing the thousands of IOUs they have received from constituents on the war in Afghanistan and the escalating costs of the war to the American tax pay payer. Members of congress will be accompanied by participating organizations and veterans. This press event in reaction to Rethink Afghanistan’s IOU campaign (www.RethinkAfghanistan.com). Rethink Afghanistan is a project of Brave New Foundation.
Who: Members of Congress includes:
Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.)
Walter Jones (R-N.C.),
John Conyers (D-Mich.),
Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.)
Mike Honda (D-Calif.),
Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas),
Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), and
James McGovern (D-Mass.)
Others TBD
Organizations and veterans attending include:
Jim Wallis, (Sojourners)
Matthew Hoh (Afghanistan Study Group),
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer (Center for Advanced Defense Studies),
Michael Ostrolenk (Liberty Coalition),
Jacob Diliberto (Veterans for Rethinking Afghanistan), and
Bruce Fein, Author and Columnist
When: Thursday, April 14, from 2:30-3pm.
Where: 441 Cannon House Office Building
Online Action: Rethink Afghanistan’s new Afghanistan War Tax Calculator (www.RethinkAfghanistan.com) lets users see the impact of the Afghanistan War and other out-of-control military spending on their pocketbooks. Users can enter the amount of income they earned this year and receive an “I.O.U.” for the amount of their income taxes that get spent on war. The tool lets them forward their I.O.U. to Congress, urging representatives to rethink the excessive levels of war spending on the Afghanistan conflict and other ventures that are wrecking our federal budget. More than 60,000 people have used the calculator to date.
Background:
Tax Day is just around the corner (April 18), and the costs to the taxpayer from the Afghanistan War have never been higher. Total direct costs just for 2011 alone are expected to exceed $107 billion.
Rethink Afghanistan, together with a variety of other groups and elected officials from across the ideological spectrum (see below) is working to focus Americans’ attention on excessive military spending on Afghanistan and other ventures and to put them in touch with their representatives in Congress.
Brave New Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization whose mission is to use video and new media to amplify stories that inform the public, change attitudes and motivate people to make a difference. To find out more, please visit http://www.bravenewfoundation.org.
EOS, you’ve demonstrated fairly lucidly that you don’t like blacks (in the Township and also the White House). How do you feel about Jews?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/14/goldman-financial-crisis-prosecution_n_848994.html
Wow, EOS had Tater teach her how to use Ctrl-C.
Here is you typical liberal, Barack Obama supporter:
1. http://noiri.blogspot.com/2011/02/how-obama-got-elected-by-these-voters.html
………and then we have this:
2. http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=4zRbe3kv70A
3. http://weaselzippers.us/2011/03/02/video-leftist-wisconsin-protesters-cant-explain-what-theyre-fighting-against/
This is why the country is in the mess we are in. These are the typical people who support and vote for Democrats. Why do they vote this way. A simple answer of one word: “Entitlements”. The Party of Free!
4. http://noiri.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-and-why-obama-got-elected-idiot.html
5. http://dailybail.com/home/meet-chairman-bernankes-replacement-happy-hour-in-santa-cruz.html
6. …………..and then we have this typical moonbat liberal, Joy Behar: http://weaselzippers.us/2011/03/16/lefty-loon-joy-behar-im-sure-the-people-in-concentration-camps-made-jokes-about-each-other-and-the-nazis/#comment-86451
7. At $174,000.00 per year plus expenses, Linda Sanchez (D), California just can’t make it from week to week! Pathetic!
http://www.ihatethemedia.com/congresswoman-linda-sanchez-demands-her-paycheck-during-shutdown?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ihatethemedia+%28I+Hate+the+Media%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo
8. Now we have your typical liberal/Democratic Congresswoman: http://therealrevo.com/blog/?p=43579
I think, to a great extent, the American liberals are responsible for Obama’s failure. If we were serious about change, we’d be out there in the streets, driving support for that agenda. Truth is, as much as people say the want change, they don’t want to do the work necessary. They want to vote for a President and then have that be the end of it. We wanted to have Obama fight the battle. Truth is, there’s only so much he can do.
From the Progress Report:
A Better Path To Prosperity
As the nation edges closer to hitting the debt ceiling, President Obama delivered at George Washington University yesterday a new plan to reduce the deficit by $4.4 trillion over the next 12 years — a rebuttal to the GOP’s “Path to Prosperity” plan sponsored by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). Matching targeted spending cuts with less drastic entitlement reform and a more realistic tax policy, Obama’s plan, as Center for American Progress notes, “puts us on a much more sustainable path, and most importantly, would do so without putting further burdens on seniors and an already-struggling middle class.” While a big step away from his 2012 budget, Obama’s plan stands in stark contrast to Ryan’s “draconian” vision that gouges out the budget at their expense. Trading cuts and reforms that overly burden vulnerable populations for tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, Ryan’s budget earned rebuke even from conservative economists. Former President Ronald Reagan’s budget director called it “a measure of how far off the deep end Republicans have gone.” Obama did not mince words when drawing the contrast between the GOP vision and his “compassionate” alternative. In response, House Republicans elected to decry what they saw as the president’s political, unfriendly treatment rather than offer the merits of their policy. Hearkening back to the 1995 government shutdown, Republicans are now hinting that Obama’s strong words might be enough to derail budget negotiations — no matter how valid the proposal.
OBAMA’S VISION: Rather than relying exclusively on deep spending cuts, President Obama’s deficit plan offers a framework to more responsibly reduce the deficit over the next 12 years through a multi-pronged approach. To achieve the $4 trillion in deficit reductions, Obama called for $2 trillion in spending cuts while maintaining “investments” in “schools, highways, bridges and research” that help maintain global competitiveness. However, aware of the ballooning defense budget, Obama also called to cut $400 billion from national security over 10 years — a move the GOP has specifically avoided. On entitlement programs, Obama asked both parties to “work together now to strengthen Social Security” and proposed saving $340 billion on Medicare and Medicaid by 2021 through increasing efficiency. “We will reduce wasteful subsidies and erroneous payments” and “cut spending on prescription drugs by using Medicare’s purchasing power to drive greater efficiency,” he said. In stark contrast to Ryan’s Medicare voucher plan, Obama’s Medicare plan builds on the cost containment reforms in the health care reform law by expanding IPAB, a 15-person commission tasked with advising Congress on how to reduce excess growth in Medicare if costs exceed GDP per capita plus one percent but will do so without rationing care or raising premiums or cost sharing. Obama’s clearest policy declaration, however, centered on his rebuke of the Bush-era tax cuts. “We cannot afford one trillion dollars in tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. We can’t afford it. And I refuse to renew then again,” he said. Opting to move towards his fiscal commission’s policies, Obama plans to allow those tax cuts to expire at the end of 2012 and would raise an additional $1 trillion by overhauling the tax code to lower rates and eliminate tax breaks. And should all these deficit reduction efforts miss their targets, Obama called for a fail-safe “trigger mechanism ” that would force “across-the-board spending reductions if the ratio of debt-to-GDP is not stabilized by 2014 and projected to decline for the rest of the decade.” While Obama’s plan does propose significant cuts and misses opportunities to add additional revenues and find secure additional savings in the Pentagon budget, it provides a more “balanced” deficit plan than offered by the GOP. In response, U.S. bonds and the dollar rose based on hopes that Obama’s plan would “shore up the United States’ credit-worthiness and the dollar’s reserve status.” Oil recovered by 1.5 percent.
RYAN’S ‘PESSIMISTIC’ PLAN: A driving factor behind Obama’s plan was to provide a “compassionate” alternative to slash-and-burn Republican proposal offered last week. “This debate over budgets and deficits is about more than just numbers on a page,” Obama said. “It’s about the kind of future we want.” Dubbing Ryan’s plan as a “pessimistic” vision that “is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America,” Obama blasted Republicans for implementing cuts that allow our infrastructure to “crumble” and “collapse” and, by slashing billions from Pell Grants, for telling “bright young Americans” that “we can’t afford” to support their education. He then lambasted Ryan’s Medicare voucher program for “end[ing] Medicare as we know it.” “Instead of guaranteed health care, you will get a voucher. And if that voucher isn’t worth enough to buy insurance, tough luck — you’re on your own,” he said. Indeed, according to the non-partisan CBO, seniors will end up paying significantly more for their health benefits if House Republicans have their way. He viewed the GOP’s plan to rob Medicaid of $771 billion over the next decade by turning it into a block grant program as a vision that tells 50 million Americans, including “poor children,” “middle-class families” with disabled children, and low-income seniors “to fend for themselves.” But “worst of all,” he said, was the Republican vision increase the burden on the vulnerable just so a corporate tax rate can be ten points lower and so we can “afford more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy.” Criticizing the tax break he’d receive while asking seniors to pay “$6,400” more in health costs, Obama said “that’s not right, and it’s not going to happen as long as I’m President.”
POLITICS OF WHINING: Invited to the address, House Republicans bristled under Obama’s rebuke and quickly rejected his plan as a “political broadside from the campaigner-in-chief.” Almost completely ignoring his policies, House Republicans took their turn at the podium to lambast the president for engaging in “partisan rhetoric .” House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) insisted that Obama’s plan was “light on the specifics” but “didn’t lack shameless political attacks and scare tactics.” Ryan claimed Obama’s “demagoguery” was “exploiting people’s emotions of fear, envy, and anxiety.” Indeed, Ryan gave a detailed account of his hurt feelings, tracing them from “excited” to “naively optimistic” to “disappointed” then to “sad,” and hinted that Obama’s rebuke “sure doesn’t help” Republicans forge a budget consensus. Now “sincerely disappointed” at Obama’s “partisan broadsides against us,” Ryan is also suggesting that his hurt feelings will make it “that much harder for the two parties to come together with mutual respect of one another to get things done.” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), however, did offer House Republicans’ sole policy response: “We, as a conference, won’t raise taxes” on the wealthy.
Tax Day protest in AA:
http://usuncut.org/actions/366
Say what you will about Obama, he’s balls-on accurate with this somwhat private comment on Paul Ryan.
“This is the same guy that voted for two wars that were unpaid for, voted for the Bush tax cuts that were unpaid for, voted for the prescription drug bill that cost as much as my health care bill — but wasn’t paid for.”
I wish he’d talk like that all the time, and in public. That’s the PResident I want.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2011/04/obama-uncensored.html
From Paul Krugman:
Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, sounds upset. And you can see why: President Obama, to the great relief of progressives, has called his bluff.
Last week, Mr. Ryan unveiled his budget proposal, and the initial reaction of much of the punditocracy was best summed up (sarcastically) by the blogger John Cole: “The plan is bold! It is serious! It took courage! It re-frames the debate! The ball is in Obama’s court! Very wonky! It is a game-changer! Did I mention it is serious?”
Then people who actually understand budget numbers went to work, and it became clear that the proposal wasn’t serious at all. In fact, it was a sick joke. The only real things in it were savage cuts in aid to the needy and the uninsured, huge tax cuts for corporations and the rich, and Medicare privatization. All the alleged cost savings were pure fantasy.
On Wednesday, as I said, the president called Mr. Ryan’s bluff: after offering a spirited (and reassuring) defense of social insurance, he declared, “There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. And I don’t think there’s anything courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill.” Actually, the Ryan plan calls for $2.9 trillion in tax cuts, but who’s counting?
And then Mr. Obama laid out a budget plan that really is serious.
The president’s proposal isn’t perfect, by a long shot. My own view is that while the spending controls on Medicare he proposed are exactly the right way to go, he’s probably expecting too much payoff in the near term. And over the longer run, I believe that we’ll need modestly higher taxes on the middle class as well as the rich to pay for the kind of society we want. But the vision was right, and the numbers were far more credible than anything in the Ryan sales pitch.
And the hissy fit — I mean, criticism — the Obama plan provoked from Mr. Ryan was deeply revealing, as the man who proposes using budget deficits as an excuse to cut taxes on the rich accused the president of being “partisan.” Mr. Ryan also accused the president of being “dramatically inaccurate” — this from someone whose plan included a $200 billion error in its calculation of interest costs and appears to have made an even bigger error on Medicaid costs. He didn’t say what the inaccuracies were.
And now for something completely wonkish: Can we talk, briefly, about politicians talking about drugs?
For the contrast between Mr. Ryan last week and Mr. Obama on Wednesday wasn’t just about visions of society. There was also a difference in visions of how the world works. And nowhere was that clearer than in the issue of how Medicare should pay for drugs.
Mr. Obama declared, “We will cut spending on prescription drugs by using Medicare’s purchasing power to drive greater efficiency.” Meanwhile, Mr. Ryan held up the existing Medicare drug benefit — a program run through private insurance companies, under legislation that specifically prohibits Medicare from using its bargaining power — as an example of the efficiencies that could be gained from privatizing the whole system.
Mr. Obama has it right. Medicare Part D has been less expensive than expected, at least so far, but that’s because overall prescription drug spending has fallen short of expectations, largely thanks to a dearth of new drugs and the growing use of generics. The right way to assess Part D is by comparing it with programs where the government is allowed to use its purchasing power. And such comparisons suggest that if there’s any magic in privatization, it’s the magical way it makes drug companies richer and taxpayers poorer. For example, the Department of Veterans Affairs pays about 40 percent less for drugs than the private plans in Part D.
Did I mention that Medicare Advantage, which closely resembles the privatized system that Republicans want to impose on all seniors, currently costs taxpayers 12 percent more per recipient than traditional Medicare?
But back to the president’s speech. His plan isn’t about to become law; neither is Mr. Ryan’s. And given the hysterical Republican reaction, it doesn’t look likely that we’ll see negotiations trying to narrow the difference. That’s a good thing because Mr. Obama’s plan already relies more on spending cuts than it should, and moving it significantly in the G.O.P.’s direction would produce something unworkable and unacceptable.
What happened over the past two weeks, then, was more about staking out positions than about enacting policies. On one side you had a combination of mean-spiritedness and fantasy; on the other you had a reaffirmation of American compassion and community, coupled with fairly realistic numbers. Which would you choose?
A Chronicle of Barack Obama’s Failures:
1. http://bigpeace.com/shazlett/2011/04/08/a-chronicle-of-obamas-failures/
2. Flashback, hypocrisy on the debt & budget: http://weaselzippers.us/2011/04/09/flashback-obama-pledges-to-cut-the-deficit-in-half-by-the-end-of-his-first-term-%e2%80%94-%e2%80%9ci-refuse-to-leave-our-children-with-a-debt-they-cannot-repay%e2%80%9d/
3. http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2011/04/irresponsible.html