Bin Laden’s death can provide some much needed cover for the USA to GTFO of Afghanistan. It’s more and more clear that we aren’t helping and are really pissing off the locals by blowing up their relatives. I really don’t want to read about any more dead Americans in the news. We proved our point, if there was one, now leave and save a little face.

When folks see their taxes

- redistributed to untaxed rich people and their transnational corporate proxies who trash our environment, economy, livelihoods and make us all slaves,

- aren’t prosecuted for wanton criminality

- burn the monies collected as drones spreading death and illegal wars around the globe for their further tax-less enrichment

yeah, the folks get pretty miffed.

*like*

Now the key is to win people over with the “government can and should be run better. You are needed to make it happen” argument instead of the libertarian “market as benevolent god” one.

It’s as if the President represents some party from nowhere. Forget the birth certificate, is he a stealth Whig?

I agree. I’m pretty tired of President Obama pretending he is not a Democrat to the detriment of both himself and the party. He’s found a pretty sure way to fail in 2012, if not for himself, then for the Democrats generally. I liked the Krugman piece and it fits in nicely with the President-as-outsider line.

You mean like the reporting on the jobless rate rather than the unemployment rate?

I wish I was a decent cartoonist. I just thought of a cartoon of a crazed tea partier strangling Uncle Sam.

Don’t worry, the invisible hand of the market will solve everything. In Him we trust.

If we’ll have to eventually assume the position anyway, I’d at least like a little hope before having to vote against the President in 2012.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I never heard President Obama rule out stimulus. Will the GOP grant it? Maybe only under certain conditions, but unlikely. The president basically needs to back-track from the more fiscally conservative decisions he’s gone along with up to this point in order advocate the change we all want to see. This will make him look like a hypocrite, but who will complain about getting housing, employment, and education assistance? Not those receiving it. If the Democrats take back the House (quite a feat at this point), maybe we can get more aid. In the meantime, we have the House of Crazies and the Senate of Do-Nothings to contend with. Holding a stalling pattern on social welfare cuts by saying “this will not happen while I am president” may leave President Obama looking good by comparison, even if it’s not what we truly need. That comes later. Reality will take a back-seat to politics.

I’m at work, so I’m missing the talking heads. It’s one thing to say “raising taxes is bad,” another to say “and therefore we need to cut social security.” When there’s a conversation, a debate, in which each side gets a turn to talk and shouting doesn’t make you “win,” it might be good food for thought for the voters. AARP could endorse the Democrats. How about that?

I agree with DD about the “wasted human potential.” With so many people unemployed or underemployed, not to mention that the jobs out there don’t begin to tap into the potential of those who have them, what’s missing from the government’s approach so far has been to directly create jobs.

On the speech, I was very wary before it started. Obama could easily pull a Bill Clinton and fall for “triangulation” around welfare reform, or these days social security, medicare, medicaid and discretionary programs. Today he didn’t and so he also didn’t lose my vote in 2012 yet. Depending on how he and/or the Democrats roll out the budget and negotiate for it, it could turn out to be pretty reasonable. I liked how he made it clear that the Paul Ryan approach is to kick grandma to the curb. That should be the message when Republicans try to say “we’re broke, we have to ‘privatize’ these programs (read: corporate hand-outs and grandma not being able to afford proper health care). Corporations and the wealthy need to pay more in taxes, so that is the path to generating enough revenue to avoid very harmful cuts. Are the Republicans going to stand up there and say “those making above 250k/year absolutely can not give up their Bush tax cuts?” I dare them to do that and insist on cutting all this aid.

Democrats are notorious for their ability to lose on a winning issue, so time will tell.

main street USA is in a Depression

and the new president will kill the cat food commission

You mean like Sarah Palin?

That would be a good thing for Senator Shelby to argue during debate before the vote to confirm Mr. Diamond. The “advise and consent” responsibility of the Senate has degenerated to the point where a nominee can be held up by any cranky old man, rather than 50%+1. Thank you Senator Shelby….

I offer this post not as a full-throated supporter of the Fed or of Peter Diamond, but more as an example of the small-mindedness of those who don’t think government should do anything about a jobs crisis.

Having a jobs crisis while there is a Democratic president serves as a way to unseat them in the next election. Whoever the next Republican nominee is will rail against President Obama for not doing enough about the jobs crisis. The public at large will have a hard time following the many ways that the Republicans in congress have hamstrung his efforts, even discouraged him from trying many tactics that proved useful in the Great Depression.

The House Republicans have already pushed to extend the Bush tax cuts and keep the Estate Tax off the table(and succeeded). These things don’t create jobs, but they do cost a lot of money. And if a Republican wins the white house(or both sides of congress), look for more hand-outs to the rich at the expense of the poor. Wonderful.

I live in CA and have been saying for a while that it needs to be split horizontally into about three parts. The state is massive and sprawling with distinct areas that would be better represented(locally and federally) if they had some real choices. I’m tired of these idiots who keep voting to ban gay marriage, not legalize pot, and have a 2/3 majority to pass a tax increase. Grover Norquist can suck it!

Let’s all pause for a moment to thank the democrat who refused to bow out of the governor’s race, basically putting this douche in office by splitting the vote. Way to go man, whatever your name is. You’ll be remembered, sort of.

Reading Winner-Take-All Politics, they make the argument that benefit cuts are leveraged into tax cuts. Cutting taxes to force austerity? Makes sense for the super-rich and the cult of the tax cut.

I think I’m going to have an aneurysm. The democrats in the senate are so strategically inept that they make it seem like they’ve all been brain damaged, or at least the leadership. Say goodbye to your agenda, losers. The minority has the floor.

This is pretty cool, thanks for the overview.

For a party so caught up on fighting religious extremism, they sure like to impose their religious views on others. This is the Republican version of Sharia law.