If the Obama and the Democrats can’t Grand Bargain away the social safety net, they’ll try some other way until they get their way.

Also these oligarchs probably have much of their money in commercial accounts, which are unaffected by this bank robbery.

Not that I agree with this bank raid in the first place, but they’re only raiding individuals’ accounts rather than businesses. Businesses pay 0% on this ‘tax’ while retirees pay 6.75%+. If Cyprus wants to call this a ‘tax,’ then everyone should be taxed.

“Can someone explain to my why the Dow Jones hitting 36,000 is desirable? Or even worth mentioning?”

I think it is worth mentioning only in regards to showing how what goes on in Wall Street isn’t reflective for what’s good for Main Street. Stocks jump when layoffs are announced, but I hardly think those touting the stock market levels would say we should cheer when thousands of people lose their jobs.

“I just find it incredible that all those on the Right were so absolutely certain Obama’s re-election would utterly destroy the economy and put us into a complete tailspin that would start before the inauguration.”

That train has long since left the station. We’ve been in a tailspin for a long time with Obama perpetuating it. Our economy is on life support with the Fed doing QE Infinity and keeping interest rates at next to zero.

“Today, the market is at historic high levels, the sequester is in place, and we added just over 150,000 jobs in the last month.”

What a Wall Street-centric view – the stock market isn’t Main Street, adding 150K jobs is actually a bad thing – that just keeps us flatlined – where there are less people working now than when Obama took office which this won’t change if we’re only getting 150K jobs per month. However, what has been going on is increasing wealth inequality where whatever jobs have returned are paying less than the jobs people had previously as Obama continues to gut the middle class.

“However, we certainly haven’t seen the economic Armageddon that was so breathlessly warned about for almost a year leading up to November 2012.”

We are in it already. Everytime the Fed does QE – which they do this every month – they’re giving everyone a pay cut and lowering the minimum wage. If the economy was healthy, the Fed wouldn’t be in a permanent loop of debasing the currency.

“The market has already said it is ignoring the US government”

That is categorically not happening. The market hangs on every word and everything the Fed does, like if the Fed announced they’re ending QE Infinity, raising interest rates and unwinding their $3 trillion balance sheet, the market would tank. Any number of things the government does the market pays attention. However, what is good for “the market” doesn’t it mean it’s good for the general public.

Yes, I do think Obama has been surprisingly stupid on his “Washington Monument” type cuts – it leaves Obama wide open to criticism when he does cuts that clearly aren’t across the board at the White House. Obama cuts things that hurt the public while he spends money on himself…it’s one thing if you’re doing it at a generic agency where something like that can be pulled off, but when you’re the one personally benefiting from the cuts you do, it just looks like Obama is being the Grinch out robbing kids and tourists of their Washington DC experience so that he can live lavishly.

Like many great American presidents be it Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese Americans, or Obama’s kill list – Chavez overreached in the heat of political combat.

Ah, so Obama is a great President who assassinate citizens, but his assassination policy isn’t really his fault due to politics. I don’t see why brining up Obama’s assassinations has to do with Chavez, except that you’re comparing Chavez’s leadership to Obama’s, which I’d say that makes Chavez look worse rather than better.

I wondered what happened to Father Guido Sarducci

The thing is that Obama et al want to privatize everything, like if they’re cutting budgets, they’ll just expand self-regulation to meat like what they’ve already done with poultry:
http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/04/05/usda-seeks-to-let-poultry-companies-self-inspect-their-product/
The assumption on this thread seems to be that this part of the austerity will end because only federal employees can do a certain job, but this is part of the whole scheme to privatize and deregulate everything…the solution to this will be self-regulated meat plants rather than re-funding government inspection employees.

I’m sure this was just a coincidence:
http://freebeacon.com/duke-energy-loan-becomes-gift-to-dnc/
http://freebeacon.com/democratic-national-cronyism/

It’s a Look At The Wookie strategy. Time and time again Obama and the Democrats could have achieved their stated goal of revenue increases by simply doing nothing so that we’d automatically revert back to prior Democratic economic policies. Instead Obama and the Democrats argue for Republican policies as an excuse to go after Medicare, Social Security, etc.

Not entirely unrelated all this, Duke Energy is quitely giving the DNC a $10 million dollar gift:
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-duke-energy-democratic-convention-20130213,0,3763176.story
Our government is for sale with the White House open for business.

The whole reason we are in this current situation is that congressional Republicans already concluded keeping taxes low is more important than throwing money at the Pentagon.

The whole reason we’re in this situation is because President Catfood wants to grand bargain away Social Security, etc.

As far as I can tell this is the entirety of the President Obama’s strategy when it comes to the sequester. The administration seems to be banking on the fact that once the sequester starts it will do real destruction to the economy. This destruction will get the public up in arms. That in turn will make the Republicans fold.

It might not be that he’s so much interested in getting Republicans to fold as he is interested in getting the public to fold. It seems like he’s using the immediate threats now in order to get people to go along with the long-term threat of cutting things like Social Security.

President Obama would rather succumb to Republican extortion than release the targeted killing memos to select members of Congress.

I’d suggest you re-write that – you are calling for the same thing the Republicans are doing, just on a different subject. I think what the Republicans are asking for is far less significant than the memos. Seeing your title “No Targeted Killing Memos, No Brennan Confirmation” immediately followed by your negative comment about “extortion” for Brennan to get the vote reminded me of the Life Of Brian: “We point out that they bear full responsibility when we chop her up, and that we shall not submit to blackmail!”
On many, many levels you can make a case for the release of the memos and withholding the vote, but when you insult the very tactic you propose using, it just looks silly.

Republicans haven’t been able to win the messaging war by calling it the “Obama Sequester” but they have muddled the waters enough to prevent public opinion from being too one-sided.

President Catfood is the one who is trying to muddy the waters. The Democrats and the Republicans are all for austerity, just the Democrats lie through their teeth and engage in revisionist history moreso than Republicans who are more upfront. This is just a political version of the 3-card monty scam – where there is an appearance of choice/difference between Democrats and Republicans, but ultimately you get austerity no matter which you pick. It looks the the europeans are beginning to stop being marks for 3-card monty elections by going for third parties and hopefully such sentiment will spead to stop these con games.

The problem was that Siegelman was an amateur – if he would have done a better job, he might have found himself high up in the Obama administration

“But does he really really care about his “legacy”?? I mean, Bamz is a made man now and never has to worry his pretty little head about anything anymore.”

Actually I think he cares a great deal about it – I’d say with our Presidents they’ve become increasingly vain…I think it’s just the way our system currently works where you’ll have Presidents who will sell out their constituents, just they care a great about not have their constituents actually blame them. Corporatists though they are, I just think it would be hard to find ones who weren’t vain who would also be good candidates.

That being said, I think there will could be a recession, just Obama is hoping it happens after he’s out of office, so the next President gets blamed. This was talked about the firt time he was elected on how he shouldn’t renominate Bernanke as both Bush and Bernanke were blamed the last round, but that chatter disappeared upon Obama renominating him. The music could stop again due to his choices to run the Fed, like with all this QE…when that day of reckoning comes, it’s going to be painful.

If the music stops again when he’s in office along with the Bernanke retread, he’ll whine about how he inherited this, just people won’t buy it…particularly since he re-hired Bernanke on his own. I expect Obama to be extremely vain about any recessions happening on his watch, notwithstanding that he’s a Lame Duck who will make millions upon leaving office.