The Greed Over Patriotism party . . .

[Bleyseng]

I'd pay $5 to see it on Fox!

[hippiewannabe]

Am I being unfair with my "inflammatory" subject header?

Yes. Hyperbole much?

The Republicans caved, and Obama got his $600 Billion tax increase, with zero budget cuts. The House passed two bills of alternatives to the $85B sequester cuts (actually $45B, since the $85B was based on built-in increases) but the Democratic Senate and Obama refused to offer an alternative or negotiate.

In our over $3 Trillion budget, of which we borrow over $1 Trillion every year, $45 billion is mice nuts, except as a symbol.

The sequester cuts are stupid, and could easily have been better distributed. But Obama doesn't want to do the best thing for the country. He's still in campaign mode, and if he thinks he can blame Republicans, he will damage the country, if it helps the Democrats in the 2014 elections.

[ruckman101]

Politicians from both sides of the aisle will swear pious oaths to protect and foster the well being of the middle class. They will say that their policies and proposals are all designed for its betterment. And yet the state of the middle class continues to dwindle into despair and disrepair. Why is this?

It is not because of the predominance of a right or left ideology, of taxation and deficits and austerity. It is not because of the re-emergence of a perversion of the gospel, in the predestination of prosperity. We have seen all this before. It is not because in our comfort we have lost the sense of the imperative of common cause.

It is because of the overwhelming corruption of power, and of the cynical amorality of thoroughly modern political managers who worship power and personal wealth as ends unto themselves. They distract the people with artificially divisive social issues and crises, while robbing them blind.

It is driven by the allure of the cartels, monopolies, and monied interests, and their corrupt political bargains. It is a child of the subornation of perjury on a massive scale. It is the unscrupulous servility to power of those who have sworn to uphold and protect the law. What is truth? Whatever suits us, whatever we say it is, by whoever has the power and the craft to define 'we.' It is not the triumph of evil so much as the absence of any sense of the good, of honor, honesty, and of simple common decency.

And it is marked by the daily subverting of the law as a matter of convenience and comfort to the insatiable few, and the cravenness of their enablers, driven by personal ambition, ignorance, and fear. It is the will to power, the elevation of the ascendant self and the system that supports it, above all else. Greed is good. Whatever works. And the enemy is all that is not the self, which is the other.

And where there is nothing sacred, the people perish.

Jesse

Amen.


neal

[Bleyseng]

Am I being unfair with my "inflammatory" subject header?

Yes. Hyperbole much?

The Republicans caved, and Obama got his $600 Billion tax increase, with zero budget cuts. The House passed two bills of alternatives to the $85B sequester cuts (actually $45B, since the $85B was based on built-in increases) but the Democratic Senate and Obama refused to offer an alternative or negotiate.

In our over $3 Trillion budget, of which we borrow over $1 Trillion every year, $45 billion is mice nuts, except as a symbol.

The sequester cuts are stupid, and could easily have been better distributed. But Obama doesn't want to do the best thing for the country. He's still in campaign mode, and if he thinks he can blame Republicans, he will damage the country, if it helps the Democrats in the 2014 elections.

I missed this unless it was on Foxnews. I understand the GOP passed two bills as alternatives to the sequester but they had cuts to SS, Medicare and no cuts to defense and weren't really much of "alternative" so the Senate didn't act on them because they were a Joke! Talk about damage to the country, last year the GOP refused to raise the debt limit and hurt the countries credit rating. Now the GOP/Tea Party is talking about doing it again and shutting down the government. All the while the GOP/Tea Party blames the Dems/Obama for the $16 Trillion Debt that they created while in power!
Its time to paint the kettle black and VOTE these assholes out in 2014 and let the government actually work instead of all this BS that is going on.

[TrollFromDownBelow]

[TrollFromDownBelow]

What doesn't make sense to me (yeah, okay, politics aren't rational....)... GOP wants to give the Pentagon the authority to choose where to make the cuts vs. what is currently mandated by the sequester. The Dems have asked that the same latitude be given to the likes of S.S. Medicare, and their ilk.... seems fair...makes sense right? Budget gets cut by 85B dollars as mandated and the people closest to the front line - the folks who have their pulse on the operations and can best make the decision to allocate resources - get to make the decision as to where to make the cuts. Seems like a win-win situation to me, but noooo... wtf?

[Bleyseng]

That's because the GOP Congress wants extra money for Defense (wtf the budget is $800 billion which isn't enough?) and the Senate Dems want to increase money for infrastructure and domestic programs to create jobs....while cutting Defense. Polar opposites!

[hippiewannabe]

If you look in to the details, you will find:

1) Social Security and Medicare are not touched in the sequester

2) The cuts fall disproportionately on defense.

Obama thought the Republicans would cave like they did last time because they wouldn't want to see the defense cuts. But it looks like Obama overplayed his hand, and the Republicans are getting realistic. The military can stand a reduction, and that will be required to build consensus to address the real problem, the entitlement programs that are on a path to absorb the entire economy.

As you may have heard me preach, freedom is not the natural state of man across history or the world today. It is won and maintained only at great cost. Virtually every person on earth who enjoys freedom today owes it to the United States of America and its strong military. But we have succeeded, and can step back a bit; communism and fascism have been vanquished for now, and other countries who have benefited from our protection can step up and pay for their own security.

[Amskeptic]

the entitlement programs that are on a path to absorb the entire economy.

The "entire economy" is a game. A stacked game. The money that government spends on "entitlements" actually goes right back into the economy.

Healthcare.
If a rich guy complains that through his taxes, he is subsidizing the healthcare of some poor sack of useless protoplasm, does his rich man money go to the sad sack? NO. It goes to another rich man who runs a HMO! It goes to a rich doctor!

Medicare. Where does all that money actually go, hippiewannabe? Same deal.

Military Budget. Where does all of this taxpayer money go? To rich men who run armaments companies.

You tell me how this money game is reaching the little people whose lives are seriously impacted on a daily basis by having to give their waking hours to WalMart INC, yet watch the crumbs they make get sucked into the rich bank, the rich energy company, the rich medical provider.

Imagine what would happen if we taxed the rich like we used to and allowed! money to land in the middle class where, (news flash! people work hard) they would spend that money on a broad array of economically stimulating services and manufacturing.

You are such an intelligent guy, Don, that I don't quite grasp how you do not SEE the corrosive aspects of the conventional wisdoms parroted by the conservative mindset . . .

As you may have heard me preach, freedom is not the natural state of man across history or the world today. It is won and maintained only at great cost. Virtually every person on earth who enjoys freedom today owes it to the United States of America and its strong military. But we have succeeded, and can step back a bit; communism and fascism have been vanquished for now, and other countries who have benefited from our protection can step up and pay for their own security.

And I'll not give some military contractor and some Congressman my treasure and my hosannas for the blessings of my freedom. They have merely co-opted our Nation's powerful ideals in the service of their small little games. Martin Luther King did not need a military machine to win freedom for a whole segment of indentured Americans.

The peoples of other nations who strive for freedom today are often fighting against despots we supported with the military you blush over.
Colin

[Bleyseng]

The 2013 sequester includes:
$42.7 billion in defense cuts (a 7.9 percent cut).
$28.7 billion in domestic discretionary cuts (a 5.3 percent cut).
$9.9 billion in Medicare cuts (a 2 percent cut).
$4 billion in other mandatory cuts (a 5.8 percent cut to nondefense programs, and a 7.8 percent cut to mandatory defense programs)

How is this disproportionately to defense which is so swollen (doubled from $400 billion in 2001 to $800 billion) that is about to burst under its own weight.

[Velokid1]

Amen.

Of all the industries affected by the sequester, the military has the least to complain about. US defense is the fattest, most grotesque cash cow the world has ever seen. It makes the oil industry look like a philanthropic venture.

[Bleyseng]

plus the companies that get the military contracts then feed the elected officials back campaign money for re-election. A nice little corrupt circle which is why the GOP is screaming about not cutting defense.

[Velokid1]

And it's one thing to illegally line your pockets selling widgets or managing others' money... it's another to do it killing people. What could be more indicative of a nation having an irreversibly broken moral compass?

[Bleyseng]

Ryan Proposes An Even Bigger Tax Cut For The Richest Americans
"House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) previewed the latest version of his budget, which he will formally unveil today, in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, and the proposal closely mirrors both his past budgets and the plans he and Mitt Romney laid out during the 2012 presidential campaign. Like the Romney-Ryan 2012 plans, this version includes massive budget cuts to safety net programs and a major overhaul of the tax code that will largely benefit the wealthy and corporations.
As the 2012 budget did, the 2013 version reduces the number of income tax brackets from six to two, with marginal rates set at 10 percent and 25 percent. It is expected to stick to Ryan’s past tax proposals as well by repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax, cutting the top corporate tax rate to 25 percent, and converting the corporate tax code to an “international” system.
Estimates showed that past plans amounted to $3 trillion tax giveaways to the wealthy, but because of tax increases that took effect in 2013, Ryan’s newest tax cut is even larger. The federal government in all would lose a total of $7 trillion in revenue, according to Center for American Progress Tax and Budget Policy Director Michael Linden, the majority of which would go to the richest Americans and corporations. Reducing the corporate income tax to 25 percent would provide a tax break of more than $1 trillion; further tax changes would result in even bigger cuts. Trillions more would go to the wealthy."

Copied from Think Progress; http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/0 ... -the-rich/

Obviously, these GOP guys are completely bought and sold by the "Rich" cartel in America. When are the people (voters) in the red states going to wakeup and smell the roses and vote these idiots out ! We already went thru the GW Bush years which was a disaster with 911 happening, two wars that still aren't paid for and the economic crash of 2007-2008. So we are looking at the GOP for answers to fix the economy? This lemming (me) is not jumping over the cliff with these idiots....

[Amskeptic]

And it's one thing to illegally line your pockets selling widgets or managing others' money... it's another to do it killing people. What could be more indicative of a nation having an irreversibly broken moral compass?

=D> =D>
I used to have your clarity and passion.
Colin