It’s never the Demorats who must somehow compromise.
Middle ground. Bi-partisan. It’s the Republicans who need to yield.
The way to extricate this nation out of its crisis is to increase spending, push up the debt ceiling by at least another trillion dollars, increase spending for entitlements and, simultaneously, increase taxes by a wide margin. Further, there is a need for many more regulations on just about every level, on businesses, corporations, the uber-rich and, of course, the Middle Class because, in consideration, there just isn’t sufficient cash in the pockets of the top 1% to fund the necessities of the Left.
Because, let’s be serious for a moment, if all of the above items are enacted and the country still flounders and/or fails, it’s still the fault of the obstructionist GOP.
Those announcements follow 41,432 in planned cuts in June, up 11.6% from May and 5.3% vs. a year earlier, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Meanwhile, state and local governments have cut 142,000 jobs this year, The WSJ reports, and Wall Street is braced for another round of cutbacks. This week, Goldman Sachs announced plans to let go 1000 fixed-income traders.
If these trends continue, we may soon be talking about losses in the monthly employment data — not just disappointing growth, says Howard Davidowitz, CEO of Davidowitz & Associates
“Everything in business is confidence,” Davidowitz says. “You lose confidence and businesses can’t deal with that [and] who could have confidence with what’s going on in Washington?”
Revealed here for the first time, and for the first time in any print or digital form:
The stock market is ephemeral. It is smoke, mirrors, rumors, half-truths, outright lies and — mostly — emotions.
There is no plan. There is no “system.” There is no planning. There are no hard and fast “facts.” There is no “prognostication.” There is no guaranteed, steely insurance. There are only emotions. Literally. Poorly done.
It isn’t about what is; it’s about what you think about what might be. What you fear. How confident you feel. Or may not feel. To continue:
Still, the restructuring expert is a longtime and vocal critic of President Obama: “There has never been in a situation in my lifetime where a guy increases the debt by 40%, GDP growth is on the way down, Food Stamps are up, millions more are unemployed — and to accomplish this we spent $4 trillion.”
But it’s an open question whether any president or policy mix could do much to revive the economy after the bursting of the credit bubble.
“No one believes the economy, Obama or not, is going to improve,” my Breakout colleague Jeff Macke says in the accompanying clip. “Time [is] the only thing that heals.”
Insanity rules. You can’t legislate morality. Or common sense. Or logic. Or proportion. Or reality.
Welcome to your new precipice.
Send lawyers, guns and money.
BZ
God bless Warren Zevon. One of my favorites musical artists of all time.
Mr Obama recently allowed us to see just a fraction of his true self, for merely a momentary fragment in time. However, to me, it peeled away years of historical layers of multisyllabic obfuscation and cut to some of his fundamental core. He actually revealed a bit of foundational political truth.
No one has yet given, in my opinion, the proper interpretation of Mr Obama’s words from Friday, July 22nd. This insight has been horribly missed by any and all forms of media, including blogs of all shapes and sizes. I seek to right this mistake and reveal that, if only for a moment, the president truly had no clothes.
The president and House speaker have been seeking a “grand bargain” of around $4 trillion in deficit reduction, but have faced stiff resistance from lawmakers in both parties. House Republicans say they will not accept revenue increases in the deal, while Democrats say any deal must include revenue increases as well as spending cuts. Despite rumors of a deal in recent days — the alleged contours of which fueled anger from lawmakers — Boehner said in a letter to colleagues before Mr. Obama spoke that “a deal was never reached, and was never really close.”
Toward the end of his remarks, Mr. Obama grew particularly animated when he suggested that lawmakers were putting what “some funder says or what some talk radio host says or what some columnist says or what pledge we signed back when we were trying to run” ahead of the concerns of the American people. He called that attitude “inexcusable.” “You know, at some point I think if you — if you want to be a leader, then you’ve got to lead,” he said before leaving the podium.
Mr Obama excels at leading from the rear and posing behind the review stand. He excels at Monday Morning Quarterbacking.
But he also said that whatever pledge, promise, or platform a given candidate proffers before the electorate means nothing. It’s just a sham in order to acquire an appointment via election. After that, the gloves are off. The candidate and/or Mr Obama owe you nothing because, after election, they have theirs. That you should honor your commitments is, in the words of Mr Obama, inexcusable.
Just mull that around in your Wheelhouse for a few moments. Go back and re-read the paragraph.
You’ll soon come to realize that revelation is, at once, massively refreshing and simultaneously hideous.
BZ
P.S. Newest Rasmussen Poll indicates Mr Obama acquires 41% of the vote, whilst Ron Paul garners 37%. That’s about even with Roy (of Siegfried & Roy) vs Tiger.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, whilst expecting different results.”
A quote attributed to both Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin.
With that in mind, I have only one quite serious question for Mr Barack Hussein Obama:
Why is it, sir, that you are so incredibly and vehemently opposed to balancing the budget of the United States of America?
That, to my way of thinking, is THE question that should be put to the President of the United States.
This president is only concerned with spending. He has historically resisted all cuts, and history indicates his intransigence in terms of making any spending cuts whatsoever.
Mr Obama clearly lacks the capacity to make the tough spending decisions. Any tough spending decisions.
On that basis, however, he holds his water in terms of Demorat/Leftist platform. Everyone must be taxed, and there can be no cuts in spending.
Taken in retrospect, it is an age-old axiom. Tax and spend, tax and spend = Demorats and Leftists. They are, of course, nothing if not predictable in their consistency.
Let’s review in brief:
TARP didn’t;
The “Stimulus” didn’t;
Bailouts of fiduciary institutions didn’t put us on the path to recovery;
Bailouts of vehicle manufacturers didn’t put us on the path to recovery;
The ONE US vehicle manufacturer (Ford) refusing to take bailout money is the MOST successful;
“Cash For Clunkers” stimulated nothing;
Unemployment is at roughly 10%, up to 25+% in some areas;
The housing market is further tanking;
The Demorats have done nothing budgetarily beneficial in 800+ days;
Housing contract cancellations have surged;
On the other hand, the Gang of Six deal looks remarkably similar to the Pelosi “we’ll have to pass the bill in order to see what is in it.”
Despite some strong pushback from liberal groups and labor unions to the proposed changes to entitlement programs, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi seemed to leave the door open to the plan, telling reporters, “We haven’t seen it but it has some good principles in it.”
And that is its own intrinsic kind of separate Demorat/Leftist insanity.
The debt plan from the so-called Gang of Six includes two very shocking aspects:
1. Tax deduction removal (where Mr Obama “gets” his so-called tax “cuts”; 2. A constructive insertion of a Constitutional balanced budget amendment;
Let me be, again, please, incredibly and perfectly plain, with an emphasis on clarity:
Tax deductions will be placed on the backs of the Middle Class. There simply are NOT enough “rich” people to enable the cash that Mr Obama wants. The FIRST proposal on the line is the mortgage deduction.
Again, to be plain: there is roughly a 10% cost factored into every house for this.
You eliminate the mortgage deduction? You have, positively, absolutely, GUARANTEED a depression that will make the 1929 Great Depression look like child’s play. Housing values will further plummet and incentives will be slaughtered. At best.
And opening the Constitutional for revision, enabled by Article V, for a so-called “Balanced Budget Amendment”, is a loser at best. At very best.
The Constitution already exists. SCOTUS has already set it aside in any number of important cases, deciding that current memes are more important than a charred, flaky, doddering document.
What makes anyone think SCOTUS, stacked by a future administration, simply won’t strip the Constitution when and while it will, as it will, by fiat?
You open a Constitutional Convention these days and every Bill and Amendment is up for grabs. I won’t have it. I thought the GOP asking for a Flag-Burning amendment was clearly stupid, as it was. Opening up our core, founding document for Leftists during this particular administration is, likewise, beyond stupid.
Right.
You want to know what tyranny looks and sounds like, kids? Just look around. Check your DEM/MSM. These people are not about liberty or freedom. They’re about an agenda. A Stalinist Show Trial. And Mr Obama, in His Infinite Wisdom, isn’t responsible for any accountable portion of anything.
