Stimulus Bill becomes Tax Cut Bill

Compromising Away One Million Jobs...Or Is It Two?

The so-called "moderate compromise" in the Senate cuts $140 billion in spending from the stimulus legislation, but leaves in place between $300 billion and $350 billion in tax cuts.

Most Americans will get a one time check, pay their rent/mortgage for one more month, that they'll have to move into a tent city. Krugman is right, Republicans are pushing the nation off a cliff.

Maybe with Nevada's falling unemployment numbers fall fast toward double digits, Reid can find himself a lobbyist job after his post senate vote out. Harry Reid leads the nation to cowardly defeat every chance he gets.

Tax Cuts - Pork Barrel spending by any other name.

Arnold Schwarzenegger once said on ABC's This Week to, "look at what McCain does and not what he says".

Arnold says this ONLY because McCain has a big stupid mouth, and thus, usually spills the beans in his sleepy, senile old way, exposing the sinister and ugly truth behind those Bush Republicans and their shell games.

Lets take the word "pork barrel" for instance.

Republicans have refined the art of loaded terminology. Some of the examples are: socialism, entitlements, special interest, and let's not forget that string of words, "Social Security privacy accounts" which has morphed into the word "entitlement" of late. To illustrated this fact, McCain shows how Repugs think you shouldn't be entitled to social security benefits even if when the government takes out funds from your payroll check every week to pay for social security benefits. BTW, those social security privacy "gambling" accounts would have amounted to nothing in today's Wall Street post-Bush collapsed economy, so be forewarned about tricky Repugs and their multi-underhanded snake oil marketing schemes. You know this, I know this, we all know this about the shell games Repugs love to play with taxpayer money.

Just listen as McCain talks about the mortgaging of your social security benefits.



McCain shows how the government, and particularly it WAS the Bush Administration and it's THOSE Bush Republicans that are now belly aching about the Stimulus Bill in congress, after having mortgaged everything to those guys on Wall Street, Repugs now want to mortgage Pell Grants and your child's K-12 education funding to their Wall Street campaign contributors, the same guys that got the bonuses and all the like minded, wealthy corporate special interest that support Repug campaigns and corporate influence peddled goodies.

The Pell Grant isn't "pork barrel" spending - but bonuses on Wall Street are in fact "pork barrel" spending projects, projects that Repugs NEVER, EVER complain about - or hasn't anyone notice? Obama talks about the Wall Street bonus heist but Republicans don't say a word about those Wall Street guys and the taxpayer robbery.

I have to say that McCain looks like he's almost crying in his latest TV media rounds, and it's all because Obama hasn't been bipartisan enough to let Republican's decorate his Stimulus Bill "Christmas Tree" with their rich and corporate friendly tax cut ornaments.

The Down Under Blues of the Dow Jones

Poor old Ruppy! The old man is singing the blues.

All that work he did for the Bushies - gone up in smoke, as Ruppy appears to have gotten burned. No honor among propagandized and thieves, I guess. Not sure Ruppy can count on Obama at all, as it looks like a blood bath for anyone. So Ruppy should just let Faux news keep on singing tax cuts, parading that lip glossed over, Neiman Marcus fashion elephant Palin and her co-star, Joe dim-wit toilet fixer on the tube. Yeah, that should seal the deal, pal.

Rupert Murdoch isn't easily outfoxed. But the Bancroft family, which sold him Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, looks to have got the better of the media mogul.

If Obama is Wise....

THE worst thing Obama could do right now would be to ask Nancy Pelosi to simmer down, as she has a huge majority so really isn't it quite nasty of the House Republicans to continue to resort to name calling games - as the party of Bush has been banished for good reason, it isn't Nancy's problem. The GOP House Republicans are basically irrelevant - so play nice or don't play at all. It's up to Republicans to do that and not Nancy Pelosi's issue.

Now would be a good time for some old fashion, economic revival in Martin Luther King, Jr style of righteous indignation. Obama should let loose, in stronger terms that he did in the WaPo today. Republicans are clearly NOT interested in bipartisanship, but instead only in Rush Limbaugh style exploiting BS alone.

Pat Buchanan illustrates this clearly in his latest column.

FDR exploited the Depression to launch his New Deal, bring an end to a Republican hegemony of seven decades and make Democrats the majority party, until Richard Nixon picked the lock. While the debate is endless over whether the New Deal ended the Depression or caused it to endure until World War II spending pulled us out of the ditch, few deny that FDR left a monumental legacy.

And that Pat ends with this:

If Obama gets this one wrong, and all this pork and welfare fail to generate real growth, his party could face a wipeout in 2010, and his opportunity could be lost forever. Does he really want to bet the farm on the nag Nancy Pelosi just trotted out of the House?

Obama needs to draw the attention back to himself, as the GOP is trying to demonize Nancy, divide and conquer (not that she hasn't been the coward for far too long), but Nancy shouldn't have to give into a small minority of fringe GOP at all, period. This latest dust up isn't about Nancy, it's about the GOP continuing to play ugly games that should have ended when Bush left office. Obama will need to use his high poll numbers, use that capital or lose it as Republicans chip away at it, so long as Obama pretends that the GOP is interested in bipartisanship. They aren't.

This House Member gets it right.

Rep: Barney Frank: ""Barack Obama has this desire to be widely liked way more than is helpful. He should look to Franklin Roosevelt, who said he 'welcomed their [Republican] hatred'. We have real differences with the Republicans and, like FDR, we should draw the line."

We're done with the GOP's nasty games and we can't afford to play those games anymore. So now, Obama needs to say so in no uncertain terms. The GOP in the house has problems all right, but it's THEIR PROBLEM. It's time for Obama to Party like it's 1933.

Daschle: "Please don't call me an Obstructionist"

Former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle is a former senator for good reason, because Americans gave him the boot. When it came time for re-election angry voters didn't show up to vote for him at all - left him to the Republican wolves.

Now, I think it's time that Mr. Daschle had the decency to do what New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson did, withdraw his nomination, and failing that, Barak Obama should ask him to resign his nomination.

Thomas A. Daschle, fighting to defend his nomination to be secretary of health and human services, released a letter early today apologizing to the top lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee for mistakes on his personal income tax returns that resulted in $146,000 in back payments.

When will our esteemed celebrity members of today's corporate owned press going to ask Obama about the "change we can believe in" with this pick for secretary of health and human services? We should have listen to Paul Krugman, as he did try to warn us about Obama, particularly when it came to health care issues? As we can see, Obama speaks more and more with a forked tongue. Promises are everything and actions are none. If Obama is wise he would have learned a lesson from Daschle's demise. A lesson that if Obama disappoints those faceless donors, they will fed him to Republicans and we know that Republicans have no mercy. Republicans don't want to be bipartisan and they are not Obama's friends, even as Obama wants to pretend they are. Obama will either serve the American people or he'll serve Republicans and himself, but he can't do both. Obama wants to be like Tom Daschle, pretend the American people won't notice the spinelessness, the double talk, the sell outs and therefore talks big but does nothing. If Obama doesn't find his spine fairly soon, it's going to be a short, ugly and bitter four years.

Ah yes, as if on cue again:

But Obama, asked today if he still backed the embattled Daschle, told reporters, "Absolutely."Insiders doubt that any of this will derail the nomination. Daschle has stored up a lot of goodwill during his years on Capitol Hill. And Obama is riding the crest of a honeymoon of public support. Still, as Arizona Republican Jon Kyl said the other day, "I just wonder if President Bush had nominated these people, what folks would be saying about that."

Sen. Jon Kyl knows exactly what people would say, something like "heckuva job Brownie" and that's not to mention what people said about Rummy and Gonso too, but then again, Kyl does have a grinning Wolfe like Republican point here. We, the people know about the kind of goodwill that Daschle stored up on Capitol Hill, thanks to liberal news blogger Glenn Greenwald, for all that liberal news that Americans can't seem to find in today's corporate owned media, the very truth itself. So Obama is indeed, riding a crest of a honeymoon of public support, a crest that will no doubt, start to receded. Than the Kyl Wolfe gang will start to move in, and the netroot people will be saying, will Jon Kyl is basically right, you know. Like how it was true that John Kerry really did flip-flop on that war issue.

It's like the FISA Bill lie over and over and over again, yeah, too bad, but it's not like we voters didn't see it coming I guess, or that we had any real choice between McCain vs Obama. Obama is an empty shirt that tries to please everyone but please nobody. This soap opera is getting rather sick and twisted right now as the worm turns in Washington DC.

GOP Stimulus Bill for the RICH?

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wants to fix the bill.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he doubted the economic stimulus bill can pass the Senate in its current form. He said the bill needs to "put lead on the target immediately" with a specific focus on the housing sector and tax relief.

Okay, he's right, we need to dump the adjustable rate mortgage for GOOD, and really, Obama talks about the middle class all the time, but what about the poor? The poor working class Americans could REALLY use a bigger tax break right now so we should give it too them. Ye happy yet Mitch?

Somehow, I bet not!

Because we all know that Mitch really ONLY wants tax relief for his rich friends, don't we? Otherwise we can all brace for another round of lay-offs if we don't give into the Bush Mob Administration again, Bush is gone but still not out of office yet. It isn't Bush - it's the GOP that help Bush drive the country belly-up.

Frank Rich gets it right.

The Republicans do have one idea, of course, but it’s hardly fresh: more and bigger tax cuts, particularly for business and the well-off. That’s the sum of their “alternative” stimulus plan. Obama has tried to accommodate this panacea, perhaps to a fault. Mainstream economists in both parties believe that tax cuts in the stimulus package will deliver far less bang for the buck than, say, infrastructure spending. The tax-cut stimulus embraced a year ago by the G.O.P. induced next-to-no consumer spending as Americans merely banked the savings or paid down debt.

Mitch McConnell and Republicans want one thing and one thing ONLY - a big tax cut for their rich friends and this is the ONLY reason why Republicans have become the Party of NO. Tax cuts for big business and the wealthy is the ONLY reason Republicans are ganging up to hold the Stimulus Bill hostage, and therefore the American people hostage to the GOP's lobbyiest representatives for exactly the same kind of Wall Street crooks that have given themselves TARP bonus.

Broder sez: "Obama wants to be Reagan?"

Really!

The Ronald Reagan I remember would NEVER dream of bailing anyone out and would never have created a stimulus bill no matter how bad ecomonic times got.

So, Broder sure bought into the kool-aid, didn't he?

Nothing was more central to his victory last fall than his claim that he could break the partisan gridlock in Washington. He wants to be like Ronald Reagan, steering his first economic measures through a Democratic House in 1981, not Bill Clinton, passing his first budget in 1993 without a single Republican vote.

The first way leads to long-term success; the second foretells the early loss of control.

Gosh darn, it always the sex thing with the Repugs and their armchair pundits as oppose to the criminal acts of wiretapping, torture, those un-bid contacts and all the HUGE lies about an oil war in Iraq that the Broderetts of our media world are utterly indifferent too. If Bill Clinton hadn't pardon Marc Rich, Bill Clinton's mug would most likely be on the face of American currency today, that is how much Americans really valued Clinton, that he actually serve American rather that himself, unlike the way Republican politicans do it everytime they get into office. So minus the sex thing, I'm sure Obama would love to have a Clinton like legacy, even as I know such a thought would really chap Broder's hide?

The only thing Repugs want in that stimulus bill is a great big tax cut give-away to their corporate pay masters, a big tax break in exchange for big campaign money, otherwise Repugs might go out of business, go extinct as it were.

It must be unbearable to Broder that all those "foul-mouth" lefty bloggers became the huge "faceless donors" behind the Obama campaign fund, making it hard for corporate controlled Repugs to compete, especially in a slow economy. Thus is the reason for the latest Repug isolationist temper tantrum, because Repugs might go extinct if they don't get corporate funding, so they band together to try to enforce their corporate greed policies. It is a desperate survival act, the GOP is that close to demise, really. This is why Obama made the "mistake" of pointing to Rush Limbaugh as the head of the Republican Party, (a card trick, really) and as long as Obama doesn't cave to tax-cuts for the wealthy, and plays his political cards just right, Dems might not have to worry about Repugs at all by 2010, especially if the economy doesn't pick up, and with Repugs whinning and fighting the Stimulus Bill, the economy probably won't pick-up. A lesson on how to starve the GOP 101.

Now it's looking more and more like a Sarah Palin far-right radical third party type future for Repugs. I'm just wondering how well funded Sarah Palin's Neiman Marcus war chest will be in 2012? AND, I have to wonder too, what takes on the future of the GOP Mr. Broder will write about once he figures out that Barack Obama doesn't want to be the second coming of Ronald Reagan at all? I'm sure it'll read just like the funny papers, I can't wait because I could really use a good laugh, especially after what the Bush Administration did to this country, all whilst Broder harped on about those foul-mouth lefty bloggers.