Gobama Now

Loving this:

President Obama will announce a proposal on Monday to tame the nation’s rocketing federal debt, calling for $1.5 trillion in new revenue as part of a plan to find more than $3 trillion in budget savings over a decade, senior administration officials said.

The proposal draws a sharp contrast with Republicans and amounts more to an opening play in the fall debate over the economy than another attempt to find common ground with the opposing party.

Combined with his call this month for $450 billion in new stimulus, the proposal represents a more populist approach to confronting the nation’s economic travails than the compromises he advocated earlier this summer.

Obama will propose new taxes on the wealthy, a special new tax for millionaires, and eliminating or scaling back a variety of loopholes and deductions, officials say. About half of the tax savings would come from the expiration next year of the George W. Bush administration tax cuts for the wealthy.

But the president won’t call for any changes in Social Security, officials say, and is seeking less-aggressive changes to Medicare and Medicaid than previously considered. He will propose $320 billion in health-care savings but will not include raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67, officials said.

...

Obama will pledge to veto any cut in entitlements that does not also include increases in tax revenue.

If he doesn't start folding then this is perfect timing -- no one can say he hasn't tried to be bipartisan even when his own supporters recoiled from the deals he has made with the intransigent other Party -- and (again, if he sticks to it) about time.

To echo Chris Matthews, "Give 'em hell, Barry."

Arm Yourself

If you read no other political post this month, let it be this revelatory GOP insider piece, Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult. It's everything you may have ever suspected about today's nightmarish Republican Party, not just anti-Democratic but anti-democracy, instead pro-oligarchy, pro-authoritarian and theocratic:

It is this broad and ever-widening gulf between the traditional Republicanism of an Eisenhower and the quasi-totalitarian cult of a Michele Bachmann that impelled my departure from Capitol Hill...

I left because I was appalled at the headlong rush of Republicans, like Gadarene swine, to embrace policies that are deeply damaging to this country's future; and contemptuous of the feckless, craven incompetence of Democrats in their half-hearted attempts to stop them...

If you think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren't after your Social Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté...

During the week that this piece was written, the debt ceiling fiasco reached its conclusion. The economy was already weak, but the GOP's disgraceful game of chicken roiled the markets even further. Foreigners could hardly believe it: Americans' own crazy political actions were destabilizing the safe-haven status of the dollar. Accordingly, during that same week, over one trillion dollars worth of assets evaporated on financial markets. Russia and China have stepped up their advocating that the dollar be replaced as the global reserve currency - a move as consequential and disastrous for US interests as any that can be imagined.

If Republicans have perfected a new form of politics that is successful electorally at the same time that it unleashes major policy disasters, it means twilight both for the democratic process and America's status as the world's leading power.

So is Obama up for the task of calling out these crazies or can he get anything done without compromise? Will the people stop voting for the destruction of America, or are we lost as so many empires past?

Is this first salvo of a wised-up post-deficit crisis Obama, or yet another brick in the road to a GOP-driven American sunset?

Class Warfare

The Republicans have declared class warfare by violating historical norms for taxation of the wealthy and the raising of taxes during U.S. wartime. With the Crash of 2008, the abject failure of the Bush tax cuts in any philosophical or economic sense, the laughable lie that calls the wealthiest Americans, the ones who have benefitted most from automation displacing those pesky workers and replacing Americans with foreign workers, "job creators."

Even Rep. Dan Lundgren (R-CA) doesn't have the energy of believability in his tired repetition recitation, his "I'll take my ball and go home" hostage move when confronted:

No one seriously believes this crap anymore and it's the antidote to the fallacies and identity politics of the teabaggers. And I don't care to call them "Tea Partiers" since I doubt Sam Adams would have approved of the majority of them. It's an economic theology that somehow denies progressive taxation in the name of liberty.

Like the robber barons who ruled America with a violent fist at the turn of the previous century.

Demystifying the Debt

Whiny Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) walked out of budget/debt negotiations this morning, which seems to be mainly a move to avoid any tax increase blood on his hands and kick it upstairs to golf buddies Boehner and Obama. Fine, whatever. Cantor is not the stupidest member of his caucus, but he is certainly not as bright as he thinks he is. He is, however, photogenic.

As for these deficit negotiations, it is taken as conventional wisdom now that somehow this most be solved before, say, lowering the unemployment rate. When you're feeling like caving yourself to the Fox News CW (FNCW, perhaps?), it will help to have this handy list, so beautifully assembled by Avenging Angel on DailyKos -- "10 Things the GOP Don't Want You to Know About the Debt":

1. Republican Leaders Agree U.S. Default Would Be a "Financial Disaster"
2. Ronald Reagan Tripled the National Debt
3. George W. Bush Doubled the National Debt
4. Republicans Voted Seven Times to Raise Debt Ceiling for President Bush
5. Federal Taxes Are Now at a 60 Year Low
6. Bush Tax Cuts Didn't Pay for Themselves or Spur "Job Creators"
7. Ryan Budget Delivers Another Tax Cut Windfall for Wealthy
8. Ryan Budget Will Require Raising Debt Ceiling - Repeatedly
9. Tax Cuts Drive the Next Decade of Debt
10. $3 Trillion Tab for Unfunded Wars Remains Unpaid

Ah, the sweet scent of truth, rather than truthiness. All those links are clickable to documentation and evidence, so enjoy.

And remember, support and vote for any candidate who promises, convincingly, to tax the rich.

It's about time again.

Slash

Our new President isn't just planning to spend, he's aiming to cut the deficit as well, all while doing real accounting, not the fake Bush/Cheney era budgets which left the wars off the list.

Here he is on the deficit as well as the stimulus (passed) and new anti-foreclosure plan, in his own words:



Can he do it?

At this point, betting against Barack seems to be a very bad move.

Wreckage

Criminals:

The White House predicted Monday that President Bush would leave a record $482 billion deficit to his successor, a sobering turnabout in the nation’s fiscal condition from 2001, when Mr. Bush took office after three consecutive years of budget surpluses.

The worst may be yet to come. The deficit announced by Jim Nussle, the White House budget director, does not reflect the full cost of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the potential $50 billion cost of another economic stimulus package, or the possibility of steeper losses in tax revenues if individual income or corporate profits decline.

The new deficit numbers also do not account for any drains on the national treasury that might result from further declines in the housing market.

Wow, bad news. But remember Bushie's Law: any damage done by his and Cheney's Administration will turn out to be worse by a factor of 3x. I'll predict we're looking at closer to a one-point-three trillion dollar deficit ($1,300,000,000,000.00) to be discovered within three months following January 20, 2009. And American will have the next installment in paying down the Bush/Cheney debt.

Unless, of course, the designated Republican wins.

What else would not be properly punished? More prosecutable violations:

In her position as White House liaison for the Justice Department, Ms. Goodling was involved in hiring lawyers for both political appointments and nonpolitical career positions. Regardless of the type of position, the report said, Ms. Goodling would run applicants at interviews through the same batch of questions, asking them about their political philosophies, why they wanted to serve President Bush, and who, aside from Mr. Bush, they admired as public servants, the report found. Sometimes, Ms. Goodling would ask: “Why are you a Republican?”

In Ms. Goodling’s notes from the interviews, she would give a shorthand assessment of how well they fared on threshold political issues, as in the notation for one candidate who she wrote was aptly conservative on “god, guns + gays...”

...Such consideration of political views would have been allowed in hiring candidates to political appointments, which make up a tiny part of the Justice Department’s 110,000 employees, but it was clearly banned under both Civil Service law and the Justice Department’s internal policies, the inspector general said.

Like I said, no one will have to know any more about this if this guy gets elected. He's not interested.

Time for a new generation to lead, but is also times like this that the most recidivist element growing malignant all these years with the anger held in abeyance thanks to the exported violence and imported repression, but continued to be fed on smug mass marketed hatred and ignorance by folks like this guy read and undoubtedly listened to and watched.

I predict there will be more of them but the most important thing is to keep ourselves between them and our next President. Because even if there's blood on the hands of the lying purveyors of righteous bile and license, it's no substitute for someone as well-equipped, as poised and focused on solving these problems as any living American could hope to be.

Because this time, if anyone, it's going to take an Obama to clean up after a Bush.