recall movements | Existential Ennui

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budget, debt ceiling, economy, GOP, John Boehner, Ohio, Paul Ryan, recall movements, Sarah Palin

I’m starting to fume about this debt ceiling thing. I’m particularly pissed at GOP members who know better. They are playing with fire, and with the basic ignorance of the American people. Polls show that a rather large majority of people in this country, who don’t know any better, think we should not raise it. In other words that we should default.

The GOP is fanning the flames by putting the argument in a fallacious framework. They liken it to a family. Expenses are higher than income. What does a family do? It cuts spending. This of course makes perfect sense. EXCEPT THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT A FAMILY.

Government spending can be used to create new jobs, and new building. This pumps the economy, and creates additional income. (Of course almost all of this could have been avoided if the Bush tax cuts for the rich hadn’t been extended [a significant loss in revenue] and if we reasonably taxed corporations instead of doing as the GOP demands, give them deeper cuts.) If we must pursue the family analogy, then think of it this way. Even though we are in debt, we might want to spend some money on job training or college courses to give us a chance for a higher paying job in the future.

The GOP has so far been quite successful in pursuing a game of chicken. So far the Democrats have blinked each time. They demand cuts when we know we should be spending our way into a more healthy economy. They threaten to shut ‘er down, and we give up a fair amount to avoid that.

Boehner is scared to death it seems of the teabaggers, those ill-educated, ill-informed jackasses who cannot see their true target–corporate America, who is playing them like a fiddle. The GOP is huffing and puffing and threatening to throw the country into bankruptcy unless the Administration caves in some major ways with “debt reduction.” This all most surely will be an attempt to gut Medicare and Medicaid, and possibly social security as well.

The GOP, hates these programs, because it hates it’s earned money being given to other people. It turns red at any hint of “redistribution of wealth.” It personifies this in rhetoric that is peppered with “socialism” and sometimes even “communism”. The extremists within them have no problem referring to all progressives as “commies” who would “take away our freedoms”.

Here is what I suggest. The president needs to call upon about 3-4 of the top economists in the world. Sit them down, and have a conversation about the economy, how to make it grow, what to do about the debt ceiling, what to do about the debt. He should ask the questions, garnered from questions submitted by the public.

And then, he should NOT bend on the debt ceiling. No more cuts. Take it or leave it. If the GOP wants to be the orchestrator of the economic doom of this country, then so be it. The considered opinion of the “economic roundtable” will be recalled soon enough. The GOP will destroy themselves.

My opinion. It’s all a ruse as all the others have been to get their way. Their way, is to cut spending, stall the economy, and hope this places them in a better position come 2012. The Democrats must remain firm, and draw the line HERE. No more. Raise the ceiling as we have done many times before, or face the consequences. There is plenty of bluster on the part of the GOP, but I don’t think all of them have reached the point of being suicidal. Rational heads still control the numbers, as loud as the pissants teabuggers are.

NOT ONE MORE CONCESSIONS. And frankly, I think it’s possible that the Administration knew that this was the fight that mattered, and after giving in again and again, they can stand hard on this, and know that it will be the GOP who will blink first.

That’s what I think. You?

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Things are heating up in Washington state making it the “new” Wisconsin. Again, over union issues. Some people have a hard head. Meanwhile in Ohio, Democrats are introducing a recall bill, seeing Governor Kasich’s anti-almost everything not white and business, stance as unseemly. His approvals are plummeting. The legislature is controlled by the Rethugs but a message is being sent. Your time is short Teabagger!

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Paul Ryan, guru extraordinaire of budget slashing, is getting plenty of air time spewing his let the rich-get-richer-and-the-poor-get-poorer routine. The is nothing new here–in Ryan that is. Just more of the same, money belongs to the creative rich people who make it, workers are for doing the dirty work. Ryan, a follower of Ayn Rand, would privatize social-security, making “everyone capitalists”. Now doesn’t that sound just lovely, until the stock market crashes, like it did in ummmm, not so long ago…2008? Anybody remember?

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Through all this, one name has faded from the public. One can but imagine what is going on in Wasilla these days. Sarah has been relegated to being “interviewed” by some unknown judge now on Fox. No more O’Reilly or Hannity for her! She’s been marginalized plain and simple. In the last one I saw, she went on about how Obama was “using the military family as pawns” in the budget battle, and how utterly appalling that was. And she continually referred to presidential wanna be Donald Trump as “the Donald” in some attempt to marginalize him as well. Looks like the lady is getting desperate.

Sadly her clone Michele, nobody’s belle, Bachmann, just ain’t the same. I’m gonna miss the old girl. She was fun to kick around.

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What’s on the stove? Homemade tomato soup and grilled ham and cheese sandwiches.