a good enough way to pay for this if you have to pay for this

And where is the economic benefit of “paying for it”? If the rationale for extending the cut is the drag on growth that would result from taking the money out of the economy by failing to extend the cut, doesn’t “paying for it” take the same sum of money out of the economy? I mean, those $$ are coming from somewhere/someone and won’t be spent, just as the $$ from failing to extend the cut wouldn’t be. Perhaps there’s an argument for a higher multiplier from the payroll tax cut [where's the CBO scoring?] but this really smacks of gamesmanship to me. And worse, of the the Dems adopting the GOP talking points re the deficit.

…the real effect will be to move the whole debate farther rightward.

This has been the entire rationale for the existence of the Democratic Party for 2 decades – to further moving the country to the right. The question that remains is why the “left” keeps aiding this process by continuing to vote for Democrats? If they were going to “take back” the party from the DLC/Clintonista/corporate-Dems, when exactly were they planning for that to happen? Is there anything – including the complete destruction of the social safety net – that would constitute the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back? Or, how many times will the “left” play Charlie Brown to the Democratic Party’s Lucy before they wake the fuck up and go 3rd party?

All this proposal would do is make health care more costly as a whole, while shifting those costs onto states and individuals.

That’s the plan. So Obama’s plan is basically the same as the GOP plan – throw grandma and grandpa under the bus.

…you have to believe that this Reid/McConnell deal, which mandates spending cuts even though the Republican leader in the Senate took them off the table, is being tailored to placate a Democratic President.

Fuck them and fuck their “deal”.

When Democrat = Republican, when are we not going to be in that situation? When the Republicans win they win and when they lose they still win. Why is any “progressive” voting for either one?

Why would any new progressive party be less of a “joke” than the Green Party? Call it anything you want but as long as people are stuck in the lesser-of-two-evils/I-don’t-want-to-throw-my-vote-away mode it won’t matter. If every progressive had switched to the Green Party in ’96 like I did you’d have a viable 3rd party right now. Talk is cheap.

What we’re watching is the death of the Democratic Party. Or, at least the Democratic Party as most of us have known it. The one that has taken its identity in the modern era from FDR and the New Deal, from Keynsianism and the social safety net.

Get serious Jane. That Democratic Party died at least 15 years ago when the great triangulator declared that the era of big government is over. If not long before. Anyone that thinks otherwise has been in denial for at least that long. The country – and the Democratic Party – began their slide into the abyss under Nixon. Reagan and Reaganism sealed the deal. And the people that have suffered the most – and will continue to – voted for their fate every step of the way. After spending 30 or 40 years stripping the wealth from the middle class and re-distributing it upward, the country now wants to transfer the burden of health care and retirement off the backs of those that received the money – can’t tax the job creators you know – and onto those that had their wealth demolished by the the very same folks. The entire debt bogeyman – whether it be SS, Medicare, Medicaid – whatever – is not about debt per se – it’s about who is going to pay. And it’s clearly not going to be the owners. The debt deal – whatever it looks like – will do nothing to lower the actual cost of health care, it will just transfer far more of the that cost to those that can least afford it – mostly the elderly since they’re the biggest consumers of health care. But no worries – they’re old, right, so who cares? After all, none of the now non-old will ever be old themselves right? Anyone who doesn’t have a net worth well into 7 figures who ever again votes for anyone who goes along with this deserves what they get. Unfortunately those of us who won’t will get the same regardless of whether we deserve it.

“I can’t stop them but I am not going to vote [f]or them.”

Welcome to the war. I registered Green in ’96.

“We do not have to vote to enable this.”

The bottom line is that our fellow citizens already did. And will likely continue to do so. And we’re going to be stuck living with the consequences.

“We are already deep into the bag of tricks that the Treasury has to keep us going, we have been since the end of May.”

Really? Can’t quite grasp why the whole “debt limit” scare isn’t just a bunch of bs. Even without the 14th amendment, why can’t Timmy just wave his magic wand and create whatever $$ are needed to pay the bills? There may be some consequence to doing that at some point but in the short run I don’t see what prevents that. What happens if the GOP holds their breath on tax increases until their faces turn blue and the debt just gets monetized?

Because we count dollars now, not votes? Of course with the percent of the labor force in unions droping from 25% to 7% in the last 50 years – and the last vestige of unionized workers, the public employee unions, under relentless attack by the right – they can’t deliver the votes either. So the only competition left is to see who can sell out faster to the plutocrats – the Dems or the Rethugs. And that’s really no contest since the GOP has been in the plutocrats’ pockets since the beginning of time. Rendering the current version of the Democratic party both useless and redundant – i.e. who needs two parties to represent the corporations and the rich?

Just shows the stupidity of “open” primaries, without which this whole question would be moot.

Clearly, the last election was a referendum on whether Planned Parenthood effectively delivers pap smears to women.

Actually, yes it was. As well as every other theocrat demand. As indeed every election is and will continue to be as long as one of the two major political parties on the ballot is in thrall to the theocrats. And the sooner the other party picks up that point and campaigns on it – unscoring that that is in fact what the election is about – the better. Every voter in the country needs to understand – and here I’m speaking primarily of the so-called independents since I think the rest already understand – that every vote for a Republican is a vote for theocratic fascism.

Paul Ryan’s future America is a truly dark place, where we as a country decide it is simply not worth it to help the most vulnerable in our society.

That’s not future America, that’s today’s America. And the sheople have already decided. Wasn’t that what the last election was about? The GOP certainly thinks so.

Privitizing Medicare is the inevitable follow-up to Obama’s failure to get genuine HCR – i.e. to eliminate the private for-profit insurance companies in favor a national single-payer system. Obama’s HCR does zilch to either drive down the ever-increasing cost of health care or make coverage universal. And the two and inextricably linked IMHO. The continued rise in the cost of health care is simply unsustainable. But rather than tackle the real problem – the cost of care – the pols have decided to attack the political problem – the cost to government – by throwing the cost back on the elderly, the sick and disabled. Frankly, it’s a strategy that seems likely to work. By pushing privitization out to the future, they defuse much of the opposition from seniors who understand the necessity of Medicare. Those younger than 50 will tend to want to worry about the problem in the future if the choice is higher taxes [and that's how it will be painted] today.

The WH is now saying that most Americans are in favor of tax cuts for the rich. Are they nuts?

No. So who do they think they’re peddling this shit to? It sure ain’t us. Must be the “independents”? Or maybe they are nuts.

Same here.

if anything he’s like John Boehner, he heard, “less government, lower taxes, more Republican”.

For a moment there I thought we were talking about Obama or Harry Reid. Face it folks, the Democratic Party is the political equivalent of the Washington Generals.