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Taylor Marsh has been writing on line since 1996, with the archives provided here a representation of that work.

Archive | December, 2010

Obama Plays Santa Claus to the Wealthy

By on 02 December 2010

With the inevitable news finally dropping that Democrats will cave on extending tax cuts for the top 2%, Pres. Obama solidifies his I Cave Before Fighting “new kind of politics” legacy. In limbo is DADT, unemployment benefits, the New Start Treaty, all because Republicans know how to wage a battle, while the Democrats run around in a panic without a plan. Meanwhile Democrats continue to whine about Republicans showing a united battle plan, while Democrats can’t muster any fighting front at all.

Some Democrats took umbrage at the Republicans’ unified move. “It’s obstruction,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.). “It’s obfuscation. It brings this body to a halt.” Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa) accused Republicans of trying to hold a pending nuclear-weapons treaty hostage to win tax cuts for the upper brackets. He said the year-end settlement might have to include more issues, such as the weapons treaty, for Democrats to support the upper-income tax cuts.

I prefer Democrats like Ted Strickland:

But his frustration was evident as the discussion progressed. Talking, unprompted, about the debate over the expiring Bush tax cuts, Strickland said he was dumbfounded at the party’s inability to sell the idea that the rates for the wealthy should be allowed to expire.

“I mean, if we can’t win that argument we might as well just fold up,” he said. “These people are saying we are going to insist on tax cuts for the richest people in the country and we don’t care if they are paid for, and we don’t think it is a problem if it contributes to the deficit, but we are not going to vote to extend unemployment benefits to working people if they aren’t paid for because they contribute to the deficit. I mean, what is wrong with that? How can it be more clear?”

[...] “I saw what CNN said after that meeting yesterday. A line saying the president said he should have been willing to work with the GOP earlier. What? After all of this you don’t realize these people want to destroy you and your agenda?” he asked. “How many times do you have to be, you know, slapped in the face?

Sen. Kyl said that if he doesn’t get his upper 2% tax deal the new Start Treaty is dead. Of course, that’s just bluster, because Obama’s going to cave on tax cuts we can’t afford, then talk about how he got middle class tax cuts, plus a national security victory, all the while professionals know the Republicans bitch slapped Obama into submission. Don’t worry, it was just a political love tap, because they didn’t want to break open his stitches.

This is foreshadowing for how weak Pres. Obama will be on principle and policy once Republicans take over in January. Democrats are fast becoming invertebrates, because the White House thinks that by compromising on principle, including sound economic policy, Republicans will be more malleable. Yeah, because every time Democrats give an inch Republicans don’t come back for another mile.

Boy do I long for the days when Democrats would have beat the hell out of the Right for sacrificing the 2 million unemployed on the silk scarves of the ultra rich, who aren’t complaining about paying more, while Republicans like Sean Hannity say it’s too expensive to insure people with multiple illnesses, because it’s their fault they didn’t save up for catastrophe.

Making Republicans into Scrooge would be so easy, especially with their earmark fetish continuing, but Obama’s “new kind of politics” evidently involves total principle surrender to the Right. Ho. Ho. Ho.

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Because Dick Morris is a Jackass

By on 01 December 2010

The fact that this current State Department covert operation was initiated under Secretary Rice does not lessen Hillary’s guilt for having pursued it. Mrs. Clinton, not Miss Rice, has run for president and is presumed to continue to be interested in the job. Her addiction to spies, dumpster divers, sleuths, and negative research operatives has always been a cause for concern. – “Up to her old tricks,” Dick


Sect. Hillary Clinton is having a very rough week.

It’s a great thing she’s in Central Asia, with others handling the announcement of a security crackdown at State, because she’d be subjected to all manner of media inanity if she weren’t. Granted, the security tightening is a long time coming and should have been done under Pres. Bush, but it wasn’t.

Makes you wonder what kind of diabolical diplomacy Henry Kissinger was doing behind and before the technological barrier was broached, now doesn’t it?

Never mind that the State Dept. was more likely a “letter carrier for the intelligence community.”

No one should be shocked that it was Dr. Rice who initiated the diplomatic covert actions, at least as recent times goes. But as you see with Morris above, he doesn’t care what she did, because it’s all about Hillary and a possible, who knows and perhaps presidential run, circa 2016. Morris on Hannity Tuesday wouldn’t get off his Hillary talking points, dredging up absolute rubbish about his hallucinations about Hillary’s “secret (broad) police” during the ’90s, which remain a figment of Dick’s delusions.

There’s no doubt that the Wikileak diplomatic document dump has been a disaster for State all around. But mostly because it’s brought out Sect. Clinton’s enemies, beginning with the particularly loathsome foot fetishist, Dick Morris, Slate’s Jack Shafer, but also David Corn, one of the most obnoxious pissants on the Left side of the dial, who wants Hillary “grilled” on Capitol Hill. Bring it on, big boys, because she’d toy with the Republican rabble like a kitty cat playing with a big fat mouse.

After the Democratic midterm catastrophe everything is going to get tougher for Sect. Clinton. It began with Sen. Kyl’s nonsensical stalling on the new Start Treaty, but it won’t end there that’s for sure. As MJ Rosenberg writes, Wikileaks has also helped drive the neocon war with Iran meme.

The Wiki-revealed knowledge that the Israelis and the Saudis are tacitly working in concert against Iran would only make things worse, given that among most Arabs and Muslims, the Saudi regime is only a little more popular than the Netanyahu government. A US/Israeli/Saudi tripartite alliance against Iran could be America’s Suez, and could finish us off in the region the way the United Kingdom and France were finished by their anti-Egypt alliance with Israel in 1956.

In addition, of course, no one believes a strike on Iran would eliminate its nuclear facilities.

As for shutting down Wikileaks, the Pentagon could have used Cyber Command, which I brought up previously (also at Huffington Post), to do it a long time ago. They decided it wasn’t warranted.

Being Secretary of State under Pres. Obama is a hell of a lot of work and it just got a lot harder.

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Disband Congress

By on 01 December 2010

The gridlock of this week may also be a sign of things to come next year when Republicans take control of the House and Senate Republicans increase their ranks, making it easier to filibuster Democratic bills in the upper chamber. – POLITICO

Republicans plan to block everything the Democrats want to do, so just quit all the posturing and make Congress a museum.

The letter signed by all Senate Republicans is below, saying they won’t do squat unless Democrats support tax cuts for the top 2%, which Pres. Obama will likely cave on, because he doesn’t have the intestinal fortitude to tell them to take their bad economics and shove it.

Dear Leader Reid,

The nation’s unemployment level, stuck near 10 percent, is unacceptable to Americans. Senate Republicans have been urging Congress to make private-sector job creation a priority all year. President Obama in his first speech after the November election said “we owe” it to the American people to “focus on those issues that affect their jobs.” He went on to say that Americans “want jobs to come back faster.” Our constituents have repeatedly asked us to focus on creating an environment for private-sector job growth; it is time that our constituents’ priorities become the Senate’s priorities.

For that reason, we write to inform you that we will not agree to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to any legislative item until the Senate has acted to fund the government and we have prevented the tax increase that is currently awaiting all American taxpayers. With little time left in this Congressional session, legislative scheduling should be focused on these critical priorities. While there are other items that might ultimately be worthy of the Senate’s attention, we cannot agree to prioritize any matters above the critical issues of funding the government and preventing a job-killing tax hike.

Given our struggling economy, preventing the tax increase and providing economic certainty should be our top priority. Without Congressional action by December 31, all American taxpayers will be hit by an increase in their individual income-tax rates and investment income through the capital gains and dividend rates. If Congress were to adopt the President’s tax proposal to prevent the tax increase for only some Americans, small businesses would be targeted with a job-killing tax increase at the worst possible time. Specifically, more than 750,000 small businesses will see a tax increase, which will affect 50 percent of small-business income and nearly 25 percent of the entire workforce. The death tax rate will also climb from zero percent to 55 percent, which makes it the top concern for America’s small businesses. Republicans and Democrats agree that small businesses create most new jobs, so we ought to be able to agree that raising taxes on small businesses is the wrong remedy in this economy. Finally, Congress still needs to act on the “tax extenders” and the alternative minimum tax “patch,” all of which expired on December 31, 2009.

We look forward to continuing to work with you in a constructive manner to keep the government operating and provide the nation’s small businesses with economic certainty that the job-killing tax hike will be prevented.

The only thing worse than the Republicans is the Democratic diddling and paralyzing ineptitude. It’s one of those times when a screeching headline of “DEMOCRATS IN DISARRAY” would be appropriate.

Pres. Obama and the entire Democratic Party are completely stumped on what to do in the lame duck session. They’ve got no clue, no plan and absolutely no leadership.

Barack Obama is revealing he’s so far out of his depth that Democrats better hold on, because it’s going to be an all Republican giveaway come 2011. Though Mr. Obama is setting up to play Santa Claus to the top 2% wealthiest individuals long before the New Year arrives.

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Obama’s Debt Commission: Main Target is Social Security

By on 01 December 2010

The Moment of Truth: Report of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform

Keep America sound over the long run. We need to implement policies today to ensure that future generations have retirement security, affordable health care, and financial freedom. To do that, we must make Social Security solvent and sound, reduce the long-term growth of health care spending, and tackle the nation’s overwhelming debt burden.

These guys either think you’re stupid, they’re stupid, or Democrats simply have no thinking economic brain at all. To mention Social Security at the top of a list about “fiscal responsibility and reform” is mindless, partisan, wingnut theory of the worst order. Say it with me: Social Security has absolutely nothing to do with the deficit.

In a moment of irony, Obama’s boys, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, can’t even get a consensus, so the vote has been delayed. That this ignores the Commission’s very rules on which it was formed is quite amusing to me:

On Tuesday, the White House backed their decision to delay a final vote.

“The president established this bipartisan commission to tackle our medium and long-term fiscal situation, and we believe they are taking this mandate seriously and working together in a constructive way,” White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said. “We support the chairs’ decision to slightly delay the vote to build consensus and ensure that members have the time they need to thoroughly consider all proposals.”

That Democrats on the Commission would actually fall for Obama’s punt on economics through supporting the Debt Commission recommendations, which isn’t clear yet, will be the test of whether there is a Democratic Party of any meaning in the Obama era, however short that moment in time will last. If Pres. Obama and the Democrats on the Commission preside over any changes to Social Security, while ignoring larger economic growth issues that are the actual answer, I hope the entire progressive community rises up to stand against them.

Pres. Obama began his term by not only setting up the Right in this country over his incomprehensible health care deal with the insurance industry, but followed this up with a collapse on the public option that the public supported before he even waged a fight. Obama’s health care law does nothing to keep costs down, which is one reason federal workers are taking a pay freeze, but then after the midterm elections he then continued his cratering and catering to the Right by giving credence to the austerity kick at a time of economic weakness.

Job growth, education, investment, along with tax increases on the top 2%, while the middle class gets a permanent tax cut, raising the gas tax 15 cents, plus a payroll holiday beginning January 1, 2011 would be a start. Add not freezing federal pay and punishing unions that support you, see the Cadillac health care tax, since nothing Democrats do to appease the Republicans on economics will ever be enough. Plus pulling U.S. troops out of countries where we don’t belong, beginning in Iraq immediately, and making deep cuts in the Pentagon budget, starting with private contractors in distant locales, to name just a few targets, though there are clearly many more.

Taking the Debt Commission seriously or adopting any idea in such a ludicrous economic vacuum that doesn’t include actual growth being addressed simultaneously is a fool’s errand and Democrats should reject this pathetic ploy from Pres. Obama to suck up to the conventional wisdom this will help him win a second term. If it’s at the expense of sound economics and Democratic Party principles it’s just not worth it, because it solidifies Republican principles we already know don’t work.

Why come at your own economically, while letting Republicans off the hook for supporting the top 2% at the expense of working class and the unemployed? If all for the sake of Pres. Obama Democrats should scrap the Commission recommendations and send Mr. Obama a message. No one is bigger than the tenets on which the Democrats stand, especially if the ideas being proposed are economically nuts.

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