Boehner Dealt Bitter Defeat

[Denny Crane]

Yeah, they probably wouldn't like it if a populist movement like the KKK gained influence in the government, either. It's not really a matter of wanting someone, anyone, to "take back government." Obviously, it's about taking back government with their principles, for them. As it is with any group.

The KKK is a tiny % of the population. The Tea Party isn't right wing or extreme as they're being painted. They're doing something I think we all ultimately want - stand up to the established party machines and stand for (FISCAL) principles. And their demographics are a lot like those who've elected Democrats all along - wealthy, and educated.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/us/politics/15poll.html

Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

And their support is GROWING.

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/08/26/nearly-30-percent-support-tea-party-poll-finds/

Nearly 30 Percent Support Tea Party, Poll Finds

Nearly three in 10 Americans say they are supporters of the Tea Party, according to a new survey, while more than half the respondents say they hold negative opinions of the conservative grassroots movement.

A CBS News Poll released Thursday found 29 percent of those asked considered themselves Tea Party supporters and 54 percent did not. Fully 17 percent had no opinion either way.

The results are similar to last month's but show more support for the Tea Party than in April of this year, CBS said.

Not surprisingly, a majority -- 56 percent -- of Tea Party supporters identified as conservative. Of those, 44 percent are Republicans, while 43 percent said they are independents. Not many at all, only 13 percent, called themselves Democrats.

(It's not as partisan a group as some would make it out to be).

 

[Denny Crane]

Interestingly, more people consider themselves Tea Party supporters than there are people who consider themselves to be "liberals."

http://www.gallup.com/poll/141032/2010-conservatives-outnumber-moderates-liberals.aspx

 

[Minstrel]

POLITICO Breaking News
-------------------------------------------------
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Sunday evening he has signed off on a deal with Republicans to raise the debt ceiling, pending the support of his caucus. Momentum has been sliding toward a deal Sunday, with Treasury's deadline looming Tuesday.

...

 

[maxiep]

The Tea Party is your Lakers and you are the Laker fan. I bet you have a Lakersground type Tea Party forum you are cheating on us with.

First, can we all agree that English be the official language of S2? Kthx.

Second, your implication seems to be that in your mind being a L*ker fan takes priority over everything else. That's your opinion. I'm a Blazer fan. I'll let you drape yourself in Piss & Purple, I'll stick with the Scarlet & Black.

Third, you bring a lot of heat, but not much light. Any idiot can make criticisms; come up with a solution.

 

[Sug]

First, can we all agree that English be the official language of S2? Kthx.

Second, your implication seems to be that in your mind being a L*ker fan takes priority over everything else. That's your opinion. I'm a Blazer fan. I'll let you drape yourself in Piss & Purple, I'll stick with the Scarlet & Black.

Third, you bring a lot of heat, but not much light. Any idiot can make criticisms; come up with a solution.

Sorry I don't meet your requirements, as usual you win because you are above everyone else.

 

[maxiep]

Sorry I don't meet your requirements, as usual you win because you are above everyone else.

I'm not the one who felt being a L*ker fan was the be all and end all of human existence.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

I'm not the one who felt being a L*ker fan was the be all and end all of human existence.

Although it is.

 

[maxiep]

Although it is.

In a sense, you're right. If I had to root for the Piss & Purple, I'd kill myself. F*ck the L*kers.

 

[MrJayremmie]

What a joke of a debt deal... No tax increase, not even close to enough spending cuts, no BBA...

Check this out...

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Small-spending-cuts-to-have-apf-1617142277.html?x=0

Discretionary spending, which excludes Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, would be cut by only $7 billion in 2012 and $3 billion in 2013, according a summary by Senate Democrats. That's a tiny fraction of the nation's $14 trillion economy.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/debt-deal-crisis-over-more-pain-come-133616322.html

The deal calls for a reduction in projected spending by as much as $2.4 trillion over the next decade. This is made up of about $900 billion in caps on discretionary spending (including military spending), plus another $1.2-$1.5 trillion of future spending caps to be determined by a bipartisan deficit-reduction committee. To put this in perspective, the government is expected to spend more than $46 trillion over the next decade, so the reductions are slightly more than 5% of this.

 

[BrianFromWA]

I wish I had the ability to say that this government (D's, R's, Executive, Legislative, Judiciary, State, Federal) is a hodgepodge of hackery that I can't remember even reading about. Let's just set up firing squads to shoot anyone with an IQ over 70 and seize the bank accounts of anyone with more than $300 in it, so that we can really take that "Great Leap Forward". But that would be irresponsible of a serving member of the military, so I'll just say "Woohoo, government!"

 

[jlprk]

The portion of the cuts which are to Defense are a ruse. They were already in process. 3 months ago, Obama publicly ordered the budgets he will send to Congress during his 2-6 remaining years (which affect later budgets, too) to have such cuts. So all that Republicans did in yesterday's big agreement was to agree not to fight what would have happened anyway.

The pact between President Barack Obama and lawmakers on Capitol Hill, which was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday, would trim security spending by $350 billion over 10 years by limiting its growth relative to inflation...

Senior military officers told lawmakers last week they were having difficulty finding the $400 billion in defense cuts over 12 years that Obama proposed in April. They warned that cutting substantially more than that would require a fundamental rethinking of U.S. military strategy. Analysts said the cuts would be tough but manageable.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/02/us-usa-debt-defense-idUSTRE77100Y20110802

 

[jlprk]

I caught that on my own, then 15 minutes later I found that one McClatchy writer is ahead of me.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/08/01/119061/who-gains-from-debt-deal-the-pentagon.html

Once again, Obama is a conservative in sheep's clothing.

 

[barfo]

Should be interesting to see what happens in December. My guess is that the committee of 12 will make a serious proposal which will necessarily gore enough oxen that it will be defeated by a large margin in Congress. Then there will be a few weeks of negotiations and partisan attacks like we've seen just now, and just before the deadline for the automatic cuts, a deal will be reached which kicks the can down the road for another six months.

barfo

 

[MARIS61]

if the tea pouchers become an actual 3rd party, what would their animal be? (dems donkeys, pubs elephants, tea dudes ???) maybe a magestic bald eagle with hair plugs

Sheep or Lemming.

 

[MARIS61]

The KKK is a tiny % of the population.

The KKK is the exact same size as the teabagger party, and the exact same size as the mormon church, but I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

Should be interesting to see what happens in December. My guess is that the committee of 12 will make a serious proposal which will necessarily gore enough oxen that it will be defeated by a large margin in Congress. Then there will be a few weeks of negotiations and partisan attacks like we've seen just now, and just before the deadline for the automatic cuts, a deal will be reached which kicks the can down the road for another six months.

barfo

Or something like this, yeah.

Politics as usual.

 

[blazerboy30]

The KKK is the exact same size as the teabagger party, and the exact same size as the mormon church, but I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

And the exact same size as the town of Lapine.

 

[maxiep]

This deal just continues to delay and increasing the problem while not altering the trajectory much. We'll see if the American people are serious about shrinking the size of government in November, 2012. If not, we'll see forced austerity when countries refuse to lend to us rather than controlling our own destiny.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

This deal just continues to delay and increasing the problem while not altering the trajectory much. We'll see if the American people are serious about shrinking the size of government in November, 2012. If not, we'll see forced austerity when countries refuse to lend to us rather than controlling our own destiny.

Dead on. And that's what is so demoralizing about this deal. It really does very little to solve the underlying problems of our socialist state.

 

[MrJayremmie]

to solve the underlying problems of our socialist state.

What exactly are the problems of our "Socialist state"? Are you saying that programs such as social security, medicare, and medicaid are "Socialist"? Are you saying that is good or bad? Are you saying you do not support this type of "socialism"? (I'm curious, not being a smart ass here)

In my eyes, one of the main problems draining our countries finances is the military industrial complex. A great way to start fixing our real problem is to end all of the wars, bring home the troops and cut the defense budget by a nice amount.

 

[Denny Crane]

What exactly are the problems of our "Socialist state"? Are you saying that programs such as social security, medicare, and medicaid are "Socialist"? Are you saying that is good or bad? Are you saying you do not support this type of "socialism"? (I'm curious, not being a smart ass here)

In my eyes, one of the main problems draining our countries finances is the military industrial complex. A great way to start fixing our real problem is to end all of the wars, bring home the troops and cut the defense budget by a nice amount.

The problems of our "Socialist State" are that we have entrenched social programs that were designed to have 30 people paying in for 1 recipient and decades later there are 2 people paying in for each recipient. And nobody has the guts to make the fiscally responsible changes to those programs so they can remain viable without squeezing the govt. for cash it needs to spend on other things. Like constitutionally mandated things like Defense.

 

[BrianFromWA]

There's a reason that there's a budget. It's because our government takes in a finite amount of cash every year, and can't buy everything it thinks it wants.

(Personal opinion) Social security isn't "socialist", per se, in that (to my knowledge) it's funded by the people by a tax set up for it and paid out only (for the most part) to people who paid in to it. It's an "extra", but it's paid for. If Social Security only brought in $1T, for example, it should only be allowed to outlay $1T. Once it doles out more it becomes bad. If you want to call that "socialist", fine.
Medicare/Caid aren't bad in principle, but in operation. I've already posted multiple times how the overruns from M/M could fund the entire Department of Defense, DHS and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, going back to a post today about "no one wants to talk about the hard decisions", I note that only 2 people responded to the poll I posted where I laid out the M/M problem and potential solutions. If you think the people want a M/M program, then they should pay for it. Or the program should be stripped down to what it CAN pay for.
Maybe you're of the opinion that we should fully fund whatever it takes for the existing SS/M/M (and whatever other programs you'd like), and just raise taxes to do so. I'm by no means an expert, but almost all of the reading I've done on it has shown that at a certain level stagnation occurs when taxes are above a certain point, and that other economic problems are caused by it.

One thing I'm not seeing a lot of....advocation that families making less than 45k (the cutoff point for where you don't pay a dime in income tax because of exemptions, credits, etc.) start paying for some of these programs. Even when you include payroll taxes, 23% of workers don't pay a penny in any tax, whatsoever. A family making 45k is considered "rich" to a large portion of the world.

To summarize, I think our government should do the things laid out in the Constitution (defense being one of the primary things). Social Security wasn't set up to subsidize the (on average) last 12-14 years of someone's life. Medicare/Medicaid (and the debt service involved with paying for them) weren't planned for properly, and are no longer something our government's finite cash intake can support. If you think they should be, then pitch to get taxes on everyone raised to do so. If not, then cut the program back to levels it can afford.