You know the old saying “Nero played the violin while Rome burned”? That’s exactly what the GOP is doing now. They made a political decision to politicize the raising debt ceiling – a process that had been automatic under the Republican-controlled Congress under George W.
That political decision is now creating a financial crisis (another financial crisis) and instead of working to solve problems, they engaging in political symbolism like Tuesday’s “Balanced Budget Amendment”.
Most of the current deficit is the result of GOP policy makers – the “temporary” Bush tax cuts and the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead of cleaning up their own mess, the cowards have made yet another political decision to cede their responsibility to President Obama, just so they can make yet another meaningless vote to object to any increase of the debt ceiling.
Mitch McConnell, in a remarkably frank moment, said that his most important job as Senate leader is to make sure that Obama is a one term President. He has been true to his mission, even at the cost of the welfare of our Country. What is it about President Obama that has so blinded Republicans (mostly Southerners) and the overwhelmingly white-person Tea Party that they would rather put our Country at risk than work with him?
I am reading a book called “Red Summer” which is an historical study of the widespread race riots of 1919. One interesting point that might relate to the vitriol being directed at President Obama, was that leaders of the civil rights movement in 1919 (just two years after the Bolshevik Revolution) were called “Socialists” and often accused of being foreign agents and not US citizens. Sound familiar?
Most of all of the policy disagreements with President Obama are ideological, but the extreme hostility and blatant racism of many of his critics makes it clear that the malignant disease racism (our nations’ “curse” as one Founding Father put it) is alive and well.
FiegerTime - Geoffrey Fieger's Blog 
Recall Republican Leadership!
“Following Mr. Reid’s criticism, Republican officials said they have for months stuck to a consistent position demanding that each dollar increase in the debt ceiling be offset with a dollar in savings. They did not appear ready to abandon that position, with a spokesman for Mr. Boehner saying a two-step process was “inevitable.”, New York Times, July 23, 2011
The coupling of the debt ceiling and deficit reduction is not law. It is something contrived by Republicans. It is like a teenager telling her parents if she cannot stay out later she will never speak to them again; except it is much more serious.
If the debt ceiling is not raised the entire Republican leadership should be impeached. There is no legal reason that the debt ceiling and budget cuts need to be tied together. It is the Republicans who have bound these issues together. If the debt ceiling is not raised we will have a financial disaster. Therefore, if we have a financial disaster over the debt ceiling, it will be the Republicans fault.
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We have a few days filled with hours to waste by those that supposedly govern us; perhaps they get overtime pay for endless meetings that produce very little if anything. There must be something that motivates them to not take care of the business of our country that they were elected to take care of; I am far from being the one that could figure out the answer however.
Any way that you look at it, you can bet that whatever is to happen will be blamed on the current Administation rather than the ones that are causing this upheaval all by themselves acting like children fighting over marbles.
Seldom to they listen to their constituents that elected them, they are a mechanism with a mind of it’s own that cannot see any farther than to blame the other side of the isle for whatever is going wrong.
I had hoped that the race issues that we have faced for so many years were over; most likely not though. It would be far easier to try and work with the current Administration and try to compromise a solution that would benefit all. However, there has to be desire to get that accomplished and so many of these so called leaders can’t seem to get that part right either.
Time will tell and we will know the answer in a few days; my guess is that they will do what they did the last time and come up with a workable solution a few seconds before the clock ticks midnight. If they don’t, then let that be on their conscience because it will certainly not be on the Administration’s or the American people’s conscience; only the few that were supposedly elected to take care of these matters for the good of this country.
Once again, Geoffrey Fieger whacks the nail square on the head.
I hate what so many Republicans do. And I hate Michelle Bachmann, that ignorant woman whose vacuousness knows no bounds. I couldn’t believe her when she proposed that pledge for Republicans to sign, which included statements that the blacks were in better conditions under slavery because they apparently were brought up by both parents unlike today under Obama’s America.
Scusi?
That’s right! Apparently blacks had it better when they were enslaved! Not only that, they were apparently brought by BOTH PARENTS. Yeah, because families weren’t weren’t torn apart and sent to different plantations, farms, or households. Babies weren’t ripped from their mothers’ arms. Women weren’t raped. Nobody was whipped or hanged or killed. The things Republicans will do to justify their views on gay marriage… or any other “controversial” issue.
And Red Summer sounds interesting. And history continues to repeat itself!
Julie
Get out the popcorn. When you go to a movie theater, do you actually believe that the characters on the screen are real, speaking the dialogue from their hearts, and that the events actually took place and were not staged? Well, everything going on in Washington, D.C. is exactly that, an elaborately staged and choreographed event. It is pure theater. Neither party actually believes in less government. Witness Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Obama. The only guarantee is this: Whatever does happen is for the exclusive benefit of the Bankers and Wall Street. If a default makes them more money, then there will be a default. If a last minute deal (and the harvest of the hapless investors not “in” on the last minute deal) benefits Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and the other “too big to fail” leviathans then, and only then, will there will be a last minute deal. Understand this, your government exists to protect the interests of the Bankers and Wall Street. Whether you and your family pay $8.00 per gallon for a gallon of gas or $8.00 for a gallon of milk is not important to anyone in Washington, D.C. What is important is that Wall Street and the “Bigs” are protected, secure, and comfortable. As for Obama, just look at who he appointed to head the Treasury: Tim Geithner and his “top economic advisor” Larry Summers. As reported in 2009 – Lawrence H. Summers, supposedly hired to clean up the corruption of the financial sector, collected roughly $5.2 million in compensation from hedge fund D.E. Shaw between 2008-2009 and was paid more than $2.7 million in speaking fees by several troubled Wall Street firms and other organizations.
Financial institutions including JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch paid Summers for speaking appearances in 2008. Fees ranged from $45,000 for a Nov. 12, Merrill Lynch appearance to $135,000 for an April 16 visit to Goldman Sachs, according to his disclosure form. $135,000 for one day at Goldman Sachs. Nice work if you can get it.
Message: “Don’t worry boys, its business as usual.”
Did Bachman actually say that blacks were better off under slavery? There are some pseudo scholars in the South perpetrating this insane proposition, that northern laborers were worse off than slaves because when a slave got sick, the owner cared about the value of his property and got him medical care. The “science” behind malarkey is the mortlity rates. Meanwhile, the argument goes, the northern employers fired their sick at will employees because they had other laborers willing to replace them. Back in the 1860s a famous actor made the exact same argument in his letters and his diary. His name was John Wilkes Booth.
I want to make clear that people of true religious belief and conviction were the reason why slavery finally ended in this country. Slavery was an affront to Christian values. John Brown quoted Hebrews 13:3 as the supreme law on the first day of his trial. There was a conflict between the Christian values and the “law” of the land. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, when the slave Tom is being beaten to death by Simon Legree, Harriet Beecher stove wrote: “What brother-man and brother-Christian must suffer, cannot be told us, even in our secret chamber, it so harrows the soul! And yet, oh my country! these things are done under the shadow of thy laws! O, Christ! thy church sees them, almost in silence!”
Back then, the Supreme Court of the United States had “interpreted” the law (the US Constitution) to reverse almost 80 years of common law that enslaved people entering and in a free sovereign state were free. In reversing common law, Chief Justice Taney wrote:
“It is not the province of the court to decide upon the justice or injustice, the policy or impolicy, of these laws. The decision of that question belonged to the political or law-making power; to those who formed the sovereignty and framed the Constitution. The duty of the court is, to interpret the instrument they have framed, with the best lights we can obtain on the subject, and to administer it as we find it, according to its true intent and meaning when it was adopted.” Dredd Scott v. Standford, 60 U.S. 393, 405 (1856).
Does that sound familiar? “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9
@Frank,
Yes, Michele Bachmann really did say that.