Clipping blog

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• Dear New York Times: Dry Your Eyes. Your Salvation is At Hand.
• Clearing the Browser Tabs – You’re All A Bunch of Uncompromising Jerks Tuesday Edition
• Oh What a Feeling, Dancing Around the Debt Ceiling.

Dear New York Times: Dry Your Eyes. Your Salvation is At Hand. Posted: 26 Jul 2011 09:06 AM PDT Oh, dear. The Republicans have done it now. They’ve gone and made the effete left-wingers at the New York Times so miffed that they felt the need to write an editorial full of many harsh words. House Republicans have lost sight of the country's welfare. It's hard to conclude anything else from their latest actions, including the House speaker's dismissal of President Obama's plea for compromise Monday night. They have largely succeeded in their campaign to ransom America's economy for the biggest spending cuts in a generation. They have warped an exercise in paying off current debt into an argument about future spending. Yet, when they win another concession, they walk away. This increasingly reckless game has pushed the nation to the brink of ruinous default. The Republicans have dimmed the futures of millions of jobless Americans, whose hopes for work grow more out of reach as government job programs are cut and interest rates begin to rise. They have made the federal government a laughingstock around the globe. They have kicked puppies! They have collected $200 even though they did not pass GO. Their intransigence has caused the death of honey bees. They have stolen candy from the mouths of hungry babies! Their reckless wreaking of recklessness reeked of wreckage! They have caused dogs and cats to live together in total hysteria! Well! Far be it from me to interrupt a bunch of progressives intent on working up a historic case of the vapors, but the compromise they seek is already before them. Yes, there is a debt ceiling plan that has already garnered bipartisan support, the only one to do so. This plan would raise the debt ceiling by as least as much as the President has demanded. It would forestall default not just this year or next, but for many, many years into the future, which satisfies the President’s demand that it not be a “short-term” solution. The plan would put government spending in line with national historic norms, tie it to known levels of revenue, and have plenty of room in it for tangible debt reduction now rather than 50 years from now. It has actually lost the support of members of its own caucus because of the compromises it contains. That plan is called Cut, Cap, and Balance and I suggest to the New York Times editorial board that it meets all of their requirements. Well, all except the one requirement they didn’t actually mention. Cut, Cap, and Balance doesn’t allow progressives to use taxpayer money to bribe voters into voting for progressives. I suppose we can forgive the Times for leaving that one out, though. Who can remember everything when you’re caught in the throes of a fist-shakey, foot-stompy temper tantrum? (via memeorandum)

Clearing the Browser Tabs – You’re All A Bunch of Uncompromising Jerks Tuesday Edition Posted: 26 Jul 2011 03:10 AM PDT So the President gave a speech last night, so we have that going for us. You can read the transcript here or save yourself some time and read my summary of the current state of the debt ceiling debate. John Boehner gave a rebuttal speech of his own that told us nothing we didn’t already know, but he has sharpened the focus to two things: 1) we must cut government spending by more than just the dribs and drabs we’ve seen thus far suggested by those Democrats brave enough to pop their heads out of their gopher holes, and 2) the President has been nothing but a drag on our quest for a legitimate solution. I’m not particularly fond of the Boehner Plan, though I understand the compromise behind it. That said, the Republicans have all the moral high ground here and the economic facts on their side. There is no need for them to compromise further than they already have — and the fact that they were willing from the very beginning of the debate to raise the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion, nearly the amount of the entire 2006 federal budget, is a significant compromise that they ought to repeat at every available opportunity. Tonight’s show ought to be a good one. I scheduled Teri Christoph, one of the head honchos of Smart Girl Politics, to come on the show and talk about this weekend’s Smart Girl Summit. Then all this debt ceiling silliness happened. I may have to shuffle things around and put Teri in the non-political half-hour, which would then make it the semi-political half-hour. That’s okay, though. Smart Girl Summit is about getting more women involved in the public arena, whether we’re talking about politics, social media, or their local communities. It should work, so tune in at 9:30 PM EDT for the live shenanigans! And now, links! We may consider the heat under the Obama administration over Operation Fast and Furious turned up another notch. The Washington Post published a detailed account of the ongoing scandal yesterday. While it obscures some of the relevant facts (for instance, ATF agents do not “hate” to let guns walk. They do not do it because there is no legitimate law enforcement nor public safety reason to do so) and dramatically exaggerates the likelihood that the operation would work as proposed, it does not make the Obama administration look good at all. In related news, administration officials seem to have come down with Simultaneous Amnesia (via memeorandum) I admit, I’m not as down on compact fluorescent light bulbs as some, but it would never in a million years occur to me to force everyone else to buy them, regardless of my opinion of them. That’s because I’m not an arrogant jerk whose limited government power has gone straight to my megalomaniacal head. Remember how the teachers’ unions said that Governor Walker’s budget plans for Wisconsin would force teachers into the unemployment lines? They were wrong. Again. Dan Mitchell is too kind to the suddenly stupid Bruce Bartlett by half. Huh, who knew that a would-be dictator would try to lie, cheat, and steal his way into lifelong power? Obviously not the Obama administration, who backed the former President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, to the hilt against the wishes of the entire Honduran government and its people. I am very much looking forward to the premiere of the new Thundercats cartoon Friday night on the Cartoon Network. Scroll down for a good-sized sneak peek. I don’t think the Penny Arcade guys like social media very much.

Oh What a Feeling, Dancing Around the Debt Ceiling. Posted: 25 Jul 2011 06:02 PM PDT Okay, so here’s the latest in the debt ceiling debate: 1) Republicans, led by Speaker John Boehner, have offered a deal that will raise the debt ceiling, put a cap on spending for the next ten years that might cut spending at some point in the future, and empanel yet another commission to suggest some more spending cuts. Apparently, all this “waste, fraud, and abuse” is so hard to find that we need another commission — did I mention this is another commission — to find it all. Neither Tom Coburn nor his website were available for comment, evidently. 2) Democrats, led by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, finally put a plan on the table. Their plan saves so much money that Harry Reid can’t even tell us how much it saves, though he did say we’re playing “a game of reality”, whatever that is. The plan does this largely by cutting programs that are already ending anyhow. The President reportedly likes this plan and his Mouth of Sauron called it “reasonable”. 3) President Obama will give a speech at 9 P.M. that will not have any actual proposals in it,. It will, however, scold all of us for not putting enough pressure on Congress to give him the plan he wants. Since he’s put forth no actual plan, however, we could be forgiven for wondering what that is. Well, outside of “compromise”. Here is where I note that the House Republicans did send the Senate a solution that two-thirds of all of America wanted, but Harry Reid and Barack Obama killed it without a second thought. Stephen Green gave the speech a quick Sober Pre-Live Blog and found it full of hoary talking points and more strawmen than the entire state of Kansas. Right now, it’s hard to know where anyone who is not a Republican stands in the debate. Both the President and Harry Reid have zigged and zagged so much that I’m tempted to pull them both over and give them sobriety tests. Dan Collins thinks that maybe the President has decided to take some responsibility for the situation when he put the kibosh on an apparent bipartisan agreement, but who can tell? We probably won’t get a clear read on the situation until the President stops throwing tantrums and Harry Reid stops hiding from reality.

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