July, 2011 archive

To follow up my previous post:

Bill Maher tries to be sound absurd.

Obama said he had been left at the altar a couple of times. And he asked a great question. He said, ‘Can they say yes to anything?” A Democrat now has offered cuts in Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and the Republicans still said ‘no.’

What is the Democrats’ next offer?

Kansas goes back to being a slave state? Obama moves back to Kenya?

Actually, I think he’s pretty much nailed what the Teabagger dream.

The Booman explains that nothing Obama could have done would have produced a compromise on the debt ceiling.

In doing so, he maintains (I think correctly) that President Obama had no way of averting the stalemate, because the Teabaggers in the House of Reprsentatives are implacable true believers. I suggest that everyone inclined to think President Obama has a magic wand to make the stupid stop read the post. A nugget:

For every Robert Reich who is carping on the left, there are a dozen unhappy Republicans who think the GOP is acting recklessly. John Boehner’s speakership is in ashes. Michele Bachmann in now polling about evenly with Mitt Romney. The GOP is having a huge internal fight and is loathed and mistrusted by the entire international community. They have been exposed for the radicals that they are, and the people disagree overwhelmingly with their behavior and their approach.

It could have been different. The president could have refused to accept any coupling of the debt ceiling to budget cuts. He could have, rather, argued he needed more money to stimulate the economy. He could have tried to convince people of that. But, in that case, we’d still be here this weekend facing default. And we’d be the party divided and unpopular. Obama, not Boehner, would be the one whose career was a smoking husk. And the people would be blaming the Democrats for their intransigence, instead of the other way around.

The truth is, the 2010 midterms were a catastrophe. They had horrible consequences. This weekend was one of those consequences, and it couldn’t be avoided through “leadership.”

The persons who think that the best thing to do in an election is a kneejerk “throw the bums out” really need to pay attention to the bums who want in.

Sure, politicians, including those of good will, have trouble keeping campaign promises because they, like the rest of us, don’t live in a vacuum, but what they promise tells something about what they believe, and what they believe matters, because it affects how they act.

The teabaggers campaigned on a platform of destruction. Now they are trying to fulfill their promises.

And no one should be surprised.

Also this.

President Obama’s administration sets deportation record.

Via