Moderators: j4remi, HerSports85, NoLayupRule, GONYK, Jeff Van Gully, dakomish23, Deeeez Knicks, mpharris36
ewingxmanstarks wrote:Talk about jumping to conclusions.
Op-Ed Columnist
The Road Not Taken
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: July 18, 2011
Over the past months, Republicans enjoyed enormous advantages. Opinion polls showed that voters are eager to reduce the federal debt, and they want to do it mostly but not entirely through spending cuts.
There was a Democratic president eager to move to the center. He floated certain ideas that would be normally unheard of from a Democrat. According to widespread reports, White House officials talked about raising the Medicare eligibility age, cutting Social Security by changing the inflation index, freezing domestic discretionary spending and offering to pre-empt the end of the Bush tax cuts in exchange for a broad tax-reform process.
The Democratic offers were slippery, and President Obama didn’t put them in writing. But John Boehner, the House speaker, thought they were serious. The liberal activists thought they were alarmingly serious. I can tell you from my reporting that White House officials took them seriously.
The combined effect would have been to reduce the size of government by $3 trillion over a decade. That’s a number roughly three times larger than the cost of the Obama health care law. It also would have brutally fractured the Democratic Party.
But the Republican Party decided not to pursue this deal, or even seriously consider it. Instead what happened was this: Conservatives told themselves how steadfast they were being for a few weeks. Then morale crumbled.
This week, Republicans will probably pass a balanced budget Constitutional amendment that has zero chance of becoming law. Then they may end up clinging to a no más Senate compromise. This proposal would pocket cuts that have already been agreed on, and it would eliminate leverage for future cuts and make them less likely.
It could be that this has been a glorious moment in Republican history. It could be that having persuaded independents that they are a prudent party, Republicans will sweep the next election. Controlling the White House and Congress, perhaps they will have the guts to cut Medicare unilaterally, reform the welfare state and herald in an era of conservative greatness.
But it’s much more likely that Republicans will come to regret this missed opportunity. So let us pause to identify the people who decided not to seize the chance to usher in the largest cut in the size of government in American history. They fall into a few categories:
The Beltway Bandits. American conservatism now has a rich network of Washington interest groups adept at arousing elderly donors and attracting rich lobbying contracts. For example, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform has been instrumental in every recent G.O.P. setback. He was a Newt Gingrich strategist in the 1990s, a major Jack Abramoff companion in the 2000s and he enforced the no-compromise orthodoxy that binds the party today.
Norquist is the Zelig of Republican catastrophe. His method is always the same. He enforces rigid ultimatums that make governance, or even thinking, impossible.
The Big Government Blowhards. The talk-radio jocks are not in the business of promoting conservative governance. They are in the business of building an audience by stroking the pleasure centers of their listeners.
They mostly give pseudo Crispin’s Day speeches to battalions of the like-minded from the safety of the conservative ghetto. To keep audience share, they need to portray politics as a cataclysmic, Manichaean struggle. A series of compromises that steadily advance conservative aims would muddy their story lines and be death to their ratings.
The Show Horses. Republicans now have a group of political celebrities who are marvelously uninterested in actually producing results. Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann produce tweets, not laws. They have created a climate in which purity is prized over practicality.
The Permanent Campaigners. For many legislators, the purpose of being in Congress is not to pass laws. It’s to create clear contrasts you can take into the next election campaign. It’s not to take responsibility for the state of the country and make it better. It’s to pass responsibility onto the other party and force them to take as many difficult votes as possible.
All of these groups share the same mentality. They do not see politics as the art of the possible. They do not believe in seizing opportunities to make steady, messy progress toward conservative goals. They believe that politics is a cataclysmic struggle. They believe that if they can remain pure in their faith then someday their party will win a total and permanent victory over its foes. They believe they are Gods of the New Dawn.
Fortunately, there are still practical conservatives in the G.O.P., who believe in results, who believe in intelligent compromise. If people someday decide the events of the past weeks have been a debacle, then practical conservatives may regain control.
Democratic State Sen. Dave Hansen Wins First Wisconsin Recall Election
Dave Hansen
First Posted: 7/19/11 10:31 PM ET Updated: 7/19/11 10:48 PM ET
WASHINGTON -- Wisconsin state Sen. Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) handily won Tuesday's recall election, giving Democrats a victory in the first of nine contests being held this summer.
With 65 percent of the vote in, the Associated Press called the race for Hansen, who had more than double the votes of his Republican challenger, David VanderLeest.
Democrats quickly put out statements declaring the race a referendum on Gov. Scott Walker's (R) agenda.
"Scott Walker and his cronies pulled out all the stops trying to defeat Dave Hansen, and the people of the 30th Senate District said loudly and clearly Tuesday, 'Enough,'" said the Wisconsin Democratic Party.
“Sen. Hansen’s victory is a validation of the lengths he and the rest of the ‘Wisconsin 14’ went to in their efforts to stall the Wisconsin GOP’s extreme right-wing, anti-working family agenda,” said Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee Executive Director Michael Sargeant. “His constituents understand that he fights for them, not for extreme ideologues."
Former Democratic Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold also tweeted, "Congratulations to WI Senator Hansen on his victory. We are one step closer to stopping Gov. Walker's agenda. Forward."
Throughout the campaign, VanderLeest was dogged by questions about his legal and personal troubles. He has $25,000 in unpaid property taxes and a history of domestic abuse.
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On Monday, he announced he was planning to file a "slander lawsuit" against Hansen and several left-leaning groups.
Six Republican and three Democratic state senators are facing recall elections this summer, with most of the elections taking place in August. The efforts to change the make-up of the state Senate came after Republicans passed Walker's controversial measure stripping public employees of their collective bargaining rights. Senate Democrats left the state for 21 days in order to delay their colleagues from pushing through the bill.
Democrats need to pick up three seats to win control of the upper chamber, which would give them the power to block many of Walker's proposals. Sen. Dan Kapanke (R-La Crosse), whose district has a strong Democratic presence, is widely considered the member most vulnerable to recall. Sens. Randy Hopper (R-Fond du Lac) and Jim Holperin (D-Conover) are also top targets.
VanderLeest, who organized the recall petition drive against Hansen, was never the Republican Party's first choice as a candidate. Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette), who was expected to challenge Hansen, did not receive enough valid petition signatures to quality for the ballot.
The new party of Reagan
By Dana Milbank, Tuesday, July 19, 8:09 PM
After he switched to the Republican Party in 1962, Ronald Reagan famously quipped: “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.”
Now, the Republican Party is doing the same thing to him — and Democrats are happy to take Reagan back.
At Tuesday morning’s meeting of the House Democrats, caucus chairman John Larson rallied his colleagues for the day’s debt-limit debate by playing an audio recording of the 40th president.
“Congress consistently brings the government to the edge of default before facing its responsibility,” Reagan says in the clip. “This brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits. Interest rates would skyrocket, instability would occur in financial markets, and the federal deficit would soar. The United States has a special responsibility to itself and the world to meet its obligations.”
“Kind of sums things up,” Larson said, playing the same clip again at a news conference.
Nobody knows what Reagan, who died in 2004, would make of the current fight over the debt limit. But 100 years after Reagan’s birth, it’s clear that the Tea Party Republicans have little regard for the policies of the president they claim to venerate.
Tea Party Republicans call a vote to raise the debt ceiling a threat to their very existence; Reagan presided over 18 increases in the debt ceiling during his presidency.
Tea Party Republicans say they would sooner default on the national debt than raise taxes; Reagan agreed to raise taxes 11 times.
Tea Party Republicans, in “cut, cap and balance” legislation on the House floor Tuesday, voted to cut government spending permanently to 18 percent of gross domestic product; under Reagan, spending was as high as 23.5 percent and never below 21.3 percent of GDP.
That same legislation would take federal spending down to a level last seen in 1966, before Medicare was fully up and running; Reagan in 1988 signed a major expansion of Medicare.
Under the Tea Party Republicans’ spending cap, Reagan’s military buildup, often credited with winning the Cold War, would have been impossible.
No wonder Democrats on Tuesday were claiming the Republican icon as one of their own. After the caucus meeting with the Reagan clip, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) began the day’s debate by reading from a 1983 Reagan letter to Congress warning that “the full consequences of a default — or even the serious prospect of default — by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate.”
“In the year of his 100th birthday, the Great Communicator might be amazed at how far his own image has shifted from the original,” Quigley charged. “He’d see his most dedicated followers using his name as justification for saying no to honoring our debts. He’d see his legacy used to play chicken with the world’s greatest economic engine.”
Republicans have continued their ritual praise of Reagan during the debt-limit fight. Rep. Trent Franks (Ariz.) claimed that the budget caps would allow America to be “that great city on a hill that Ronald Reagan spoke of.” Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) invoked Reagan’s belief that “the closest thing to eternal life on Earth is a federal government program.”Kevin Brady (Tex.) cited Reagan’s line that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ ” Both Steve King (Iowa) and Bobby Schilling (Ill.) informed the body that they had granddaughters named Reagan.
But while Reagan nostalgia endures, a number of Republicans have begun to admit the obvious: The Gipper would no longer be welcome on the GOP team. Most recently, Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr. (Calif.) called Reagan a “moderate former liberal . . . who would never be elected today in my opinion.” This spring, Mike Huckabee judged that “Ronald Reagan would have a very difficult, if not impossible time being nominated in this atmosphere,” pointing out that Reagan “raises taxes as governor, he made deals with Democrats, he compromised on things in order to move the ball down the field.”
During the debt-limit debate, a procession of Democrats — Vermont’s Peter Welch, Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen, New York’s Paul Tonko, Texas’s Sheila Jackson Lee and Gene Green — claimed Reagan’s support for their position. Reagan is “revered by many Democrats,” said Welch, who praised Reagan for fighting “the absurd notion that America had an option when it came to paying our bills.”
Half a century after he left the party, the Gipper is winning one for the Democrats.
ewingxmanstarks wrote:Haha..Murdoch clearly said he has not seen evidence of such claims...No American subsidiary of News Corp has been implicated in any wrong doing.
Lol at you celebrating the election of a state senator.
Regan would have put a bullet in Chris Van Hollen's head.
Obama Renews Push for a Bipartisan Deal on Debt
By JACKIE CALMES and JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Published: July 19, 2011
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday renewed his push for an ambitious deficit-reduction deal, hailing a bipartisan package put forward hours earlier by a group of six senators as a sign of progress and summoning Congressional leaders for a new round of negotiations.
Saying time is running out to get a deal before the government hits its debt ceiling on Aug. 2, Mr. Obama said a proposal worked on for months and put on the table by the so-called Gang of Six — the group of senators who offered a plan for roughly $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade — suggested there was still hope for a bipartisan deal.
The group’s plan, modeled on the recommendations last year of a fiscal commission set up by Mr. Obama, includes new revenues as well as substantial spending cuts.
The president spoke as the House prepared to vote on a Republican plan that would cut spending next year, cap it for the long term and call for a Constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget.
Mr. Obama said the bipartisan Senate group’s proposal “is broadly consistent with the approach that I have urged.”
It is “good news,” he said, and “a very significant step.”
He urged the Congressional leadership to “start talking turkey” on Wednesday, and said “we do not have any more time to engage in symbolic gestures,” an apparent reference to the House vote.
“It will be hard, it will be tough, there still will be a lot of difficult negotiations,” he said.
As a result, he said, it was important that the negotiators also have the “fail safe” of a backup plan that would allow the debt limit to be raised in the absence of a comprehensive deal - a reference to a plan being developed by Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader.
Mr. Obama spoke after dozens of senators from both parties turned out for a briefing on Capitol Hill by the Gang of Six, suggesting there could still be support for a broad compromise as Congress and the White House hurtle toward the debt-limit deadline.
The presentation on Tuesday marked the return to the group of Senator Tom Coburn, a conservative Republican of Oklahoma, two months after he abandoned the effort by two other Republicans and three Democrats to reach a deal, saying it would not cut spending enough. On Monday he had laid out his own $9 trillion debt-reduction plan, but acknowledged it could not be passed.
The Gang of Six presented its plan to fellow senators as the House prepared to vote on a Republican budget plan. The House bill, known as Cut, Cap and Balance, is a rejoinder of sorts to a plan hatched by the Senate Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, that would allow Republicans to accede to an increase in the government’s debt limit without actually voting for it.
The House bill would impose strict limits on spending levels for next year, with some exceptions, and limit federal spending to just below 20 percent of the gross national product over the next decade — a deep cut relative to current spending projections. It would also permit an increase in the debt limit by $2.4 trillion only after Congress passed a Balanced Budget Amendment.
The bill, which will be debated for four hours Tuesday before an expected early evening vote, faces a veto threat from the White House and intense opposition among Democrats. It could also be opposed by some Republicans who find the cuts too deep as well as conservatives who object to any measure that would approve an increase in the debt ceiling.
If the action on the House floor showed the depth of the partisan and ideological divide over the budget, the Gang of Six presentation suggested that in the Senate at least there could still be some prospect of a compromise.
The large attendance — 47 senators, including 23 Republicans — and the positive reactions inside and outside the meeting surprised even the six senators who produced the package. It would make deep spending cuts over time in domestic and military programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and raise new revenues from closing myriad tax breaks and loopholes, while lowering tax rates across the board – much like last year’s plan from Mr. Obama’s fiscal commission.
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican of Texas, said afterward that she would support the plan and believed that other lawmakers from both parties would as well. “I think that they have produced something that has mechanisms that are concrete and that’s what I think what the House is looking for and we are,” Mrs. Hutchison said.
Senator Susan Collins of Maine, also a Republican, indicated that the plan was the first serious bipartisan blueprint that she had seen.
While Mr. Obama said he did not agree with all of the senators’ plan, by his endorsement of its thrust and his remarks to reporters, he plainly sought to isolate further the House Republicans.
“We have a Democratic president and administration that is prepared to sign a tough package that includes both spending cuts and modifications to Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare that would strengthen those systems” while also providing new revenues, Mr. Obama said. And, he added, “we now have a bipartisan group of senators” and a majority of Americans who agree with such a balanced approach.
Forty-nine senators, 25 Democrats and 24 Republicans, were present for a closed-door meeting in the Capitol where those in the Gang of Six, except Mr. Coburn, outlined the debt-reduction plan that had been seven months in the works.
“It is early to say, but their timing is good,” said Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee. He added, “It helps that the three Republicans senators are three of the most conservative, most respected members of the Senate who are Republicans.”
Besides Mr. Coburn, those are Senators Michael D. Crapo of Idaho and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, who formed the group with Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia. The other two Democrats are Senators Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Kent Conrad of North Dakota, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.
A spokesman for Speaker John A. Boehner said, “This plan shares many similarities with the framework the speaker discussed with the president, but also appears to fall short in some important areas.”
The timing displeased both Senate leaders — the majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, and Mr. McConnell — who have been negotiating the fallback plan to raise the debt limit that Mr. McConnell initiated last week. At a closed-door luncheon for Democratic senators, Mr. Reid gave Mr. Warner 24 hours to develop a plan on how to move forward — a challenge the Gang of Six met later to discuss.
“I’m happy to work and use anything in the Gang of Six that we can,” Mr. Reid said. “But remember we only have 13 days — 13 days — and there’s a number of senators who have said they’ll do everything they can to stop the debt ceiling from being increased, that they would in effect allow us to default on our debt.”
After the Republican senators’ luncheon, Mr. McConnell said of the Gang of Six outline, “I haven’t had a chance to decide how I feel about it.”
ewingxmanstarks wrote:Here's my prediction, entitlements will not get touched.
mugzi wrote:And why is Murdoch such a big story to you libs as opposed to this story which your atty general is complicit and quite possibly your president. Did Murdoch's alleged actions result in anyone's death? And do you know that Piers Morgan of CNN has been quoted recently about hacking phones himself?
Thought so HYPOCRITES.
mugzi wrote:First of all, Im not defending Murdoch. He's not a conservative or a liberal, he's a businessman. Secondly, why is this such a big deal? Why is Obama's personal police force the fbi investigating him? Where's the accountability for FAST AND FURIOUS???????????????????????????
Oh wrong political party is complicit in a scandal which makes WATERGATE LOOK IMMATERIAL by comparison.
Third, there's no direct link to Murdoch in this situation regardless of how much you snarky liberals want there to be. The man's adept enough at subterfuge to avoid direct complicity.
So why I ASK AGAIN, when we have so many problems and more important issues as a nation and scandals like HANDING ASSAULT WEAPONS TO MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS UNDER DIRECT ORDER OF ATTY GENERAL HOLDER, is this a BIGGER STORY????????????
Defend that, and ask yourself why you cant use your brain to sustain rational thought.
Oh and even though Obama hates fox news here's a little proof of where Murdoch's allegiances lay.
Report: Obama top recipient of News Corp. donations
The Hill's Hillicon Valley ^ | July 19, 2011 | Gautham Nagesh
Political donations by News Corp., its employees and their families were evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, with President Obama the all-time leading recipient, according to a report from the Sunlight Foundation.
The transparency watchdog noted Tuesday that Democrats received 51 percent of contributions while Republicans received 49 percent, despite the firm's highly publicized links to the GOP, such as a $1 million donation to the Republican Governors Association in August.
News Corp. is the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and Fox News, among others. The firm is currently under scrutiny in both the U.S. and U.K. over allegations its subsidiary News of the World hacked into voice mail accounts and bribed public officials.
"Obama being listed as the company’s top recipient might surprise some people because of its highly publicized involvement with his political rivals, like Sarah Palin who was the vice presidential candidate in 2008 and reportedly still under contract with Murdoch-owned Fox News as a paid commentator," wrote Sunlight's Ryan Sibley.
Sibley said News Corp. has spent $8.2 million since 1997 lobbying on issues such as net neutrality and privacy. He also points out the top recipients from the firm's political action committee, News America Holdings, in the 2009-10 election cycle were Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).
seren wrote:
And how can you think that the fact that Murdoch's company was wiretapping 9/11 victims' phones is not a big issue?
Are you really serious?
ewingxmanstarks wrote:seren wrote:
And how can you think that the fact that Murdoch's company was wiretapping 9/11 victims' phones is not a big issue?
Are you really serious?
Complete lie that doesn't have a single source behind it.
This should not be a major U.S. story...If News Corp was not involved it wouldn't even be reported.
The issue over here isn't corrupt news paper practices, that's a side bar, the issue is corruption in the British government and police departments.
Fast and Furious is a much bigger story.
