Does this failure look appetizing to you?
It doesn’t to me, but I hope you all are used to it because we are going to be eating a lot of sugar coated Satan sandwiches in the future. This deal makes sure of that, because it happened against all warning from progressives here in 2010 and elsewhere including myself. Half of all kossacks who enable this deal saying it’s “not so bad” or “he had to” are shoving this sandwich down your throat telling you that, "Well.....we could have had it without Democratic sugar so you should be glad you are choking on it!"
But there is no Democratic sugar. There is NO REVENUE and given the economic circumstances, its’ not sugar, it’s sweet and low. How low will you go? We're going to be in limbo like the FAA already is. Ready to stop clapping yet? One would "hope" you "change" your outlook to a realistic one.
And I’m not just talking about half of kossacks, I’m talking about the “I have principles BUT” loyal to a fault-line Democrats, if they can even call themselves Democrats anymore. This party has almost abandoned everything it stood for since the New Deal redefined the Democratic Party and the word Liberal. I’m not buying what any Third Way New Democrat is selling or anyone writing diaries excusing them. This is a sham and not enough of our so called Representatives in Washington D.C even give a damn.
I suppose that is OK with some of you as long as you get to feel part of a club? As long as you feel that fawning flattery of a politician will someday increase your standing? Well I’m pissed and I can’t stand this type of grand standing.
Here’s a novel idea; if you are going to go down that road, how about idolizing someone who knows what the fuck they are talking about for once? Sadly it’s too late since the President signed this debt ceiling failure into law (by himself) but Professor James Galbraith outlines the intricacies of this pathetic sugar coated Satan sandwich that will make all of us sick for years and years to come.
On dishonesty: the proposed cuts would reduce discretionary public spending as a share of GDP to what it was before the government had any major role in transportation, housing, education, safety, health, medical research or environmental protection. To where it was before the NIH or the CDC, before HUD, before the EPA, before OSHA, before the Department of Education. This is a false promise: those cuts cannot and will not be found. To promise them is to play to the gallery of the ignorant. To pretend that to make them would be good policy is to repudiate the entire past half-century. To make them would bring on a disaster, in many small and large ways, as the physical structures and legal and institutional protections built up over decades crumbled and fell apart.
Yeah, did you get that? There’s going to have to be a whole lot of magical fairy dust to make up for the proposed shortfall of reducing discretionary public spending as a share of GDP to what it was before the government had any major role in transportation, housing, education, safety, health, medical research or environmental protection. Proposing this kind of deficit/austerity stupidity when we need the government to spend money period is indefensible. Who can even defend this? How do we support politicians that claim to de Democrats that are this out of touch with reality?
To talk about how we’re going to get around to jobs now is a slap in the face to all Americans looking for work. It’s insulting and disgusting. It’s giving the unemployed false hopes by destroying whatever chance for a job they have before even making those vapid empty speeches about jobs.
That goes for all Democrats who went along with this idea(even if they don’t support the more egregious parts but many of them do support the Super Congress) including Nancy Pelosi who say we need to enter into an era of austerity, but especially the President who, like it or not, is the most ubiquitous force in our lives. That’s why we can’t stop talking about him; he has the biggest podium; a podium spouting Peter Peterson neoliberal deficit stupidity that hurts seniors, the unemployed, AA, Women, and pretty much everyone suffering the most.
These are facts. Getting upset with me because of the way I am pointing them out shows a lack of focus(It doesn't really show you care if you go down that road in the comments just FYI); the same lack of focus the president and too many democrats have when it comes to demand instead of austerity nonsense that hurts people.
The sad truth is that clicking your heels and saying, “There’s no policy like deficit stupidity” because Obama says so won’t make the confidence fairy any more real. It won't make David Plouffe any smarter or any dumber than he already is on economic policy or the federal budget. This delusional rhetoric shows the president agrees with the GOP that there are “job creators” even if it’s in a different way besides tax cuts for the rich. The confidence fairy is a mythical version of the corporate CEO that creates jobs according to Republican logic though both Obama and John Boehner believe in the confidence fairy. Is that really a decent standard to write long revisionist diaries praising?
I’ll end with this from Galbraith:
The true alternative is that the President will have to assert the authority he has so far ducked: his duty as President to defend the Constitution. He has that duty. He has that authority. He has the legal means to exercise that authority. If pushed to the last resort, he will have to do what the Constitution demands, and what he should have done from the beginning.
If the President cannot find the Constitution and the laws, then let the Democrats in the Senate show him where they are.
Obama blew an opportunity to stop economic terrorism in general by invoking the 14th amendment stopping this from happening in the future over and over again but it will now. Mitch McConnell confirmed this. We know Bill Clinton faced these same default threats and handled them much better. The excuse about how things are unprecedented for Obama is a wash and that excuse died a horrible death. We once had Presidents however flawed who defended the Constitution and the public from economic terrorists. Sadly that is not the standard anymore.
Standards and principles deserve a defense, not a politician with no principles or the wrong principles no matter how much one admires him. More of us on this site and in the real world better find within ourselves these standards and principles and stick to them before it's too late.
