Okay, so the president has a bit to apologize for. He’s not alone in that respect – plenty of blame to go around here. Fact is, the administration is certainly wrong to criticize the liberal-left for denouncing the deal he cut with Republicans this week. If the president was painted into a corner, it was not by the left. The Congress members who were dead set against raising the tax issue before this past election were “Blue Dog” conservatives, worried about offending their constituencies – the same voters that would soon send more than half of them packing.
It is now these conservative Democrats that Obama is relying upon during the lame duck session to 
shepherd this deal through the House. It seems likely that most Republicans will support it, so he hardly needs the entire Democratic caucus. In any case, the capitulation happened a long time ago. At this point, the main thing is making certain that unemployed workers get the help they need. I don’t care how we get there, particularly, so long as they don’t give away the store… and reserve the right to start fighting again fresh on January 1.
There will be a lot to fight about, particularly when you consider how the Republicans have been behaving in the wake of their electoral victory. To wit,
- Jim DeMint has talked about the possibility of making unemployment insurance more like “a loan” to give unemployed people incentive to go to work. No, really… he’s serious.
- The main talking point on these upper income marginal tax cuts is that they are “NOT tax cuts”, that to not implement them is, in fact, a tax increase. I heard Jon Kyl plying this one yesterday. A little wordplay here – perhaps they don’t remember that when they invented these tax cuts nine years ago, they put an end point on them. The tax cut has a time limit; when that passes, it’s over. Extend it, that’s a new cut because it involves additional billions. Got that, Jon?
- Tax cuts for the rich don’t add to the deficit. Unemployment benefits do.
You get the picture. One last point… it was mentioned in passing on NPR business news today that American corporations are sitting on $2 trillion in cash. Sitting on it.
Again… do these people really need a tax cut?
luv u,
jp
Yes, this is Big Green, reporting live from the Goldilocks Planet, recently discovered orbiting the star Gliese 581 – technical name is Gliese 581g, actually, one of six sibling planets (Did Goldilocks have siblings? Don’t know. What an exasperatingly ill-defined folk tale!) After its recent discovery, we decided to make it a stop on our ENTER THE MIND: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE interstellar tour, but now I’m beginning to have some regrets. It’s just to damned perfect down here. It’s a planet of anal retentive mo-fo’s (though they’re not too obsessive about it … which if anything is even more exasperating).
It gets worse. When they get really, really frustrated (which took us about half an hour to accomplish), they retreat to their beds and pull the covers up over their oddly-misshapen heads. (Strange thing is, they all seem to have three beds, even the ones who live alone…. and they always sleep in the smallest ones.) I’ll tell you, it’s a good goddamn thing we brought our own craft services with us (the mansized tuber is our chef this time out), ’cause all these fuckers eat is porridge. Peas porridge. And they don’t care if it’s hot or cold. (Sometimes they leave the stuff sitting around for days on end… deeeeee-sgusting).
surprised by this? Iraq is a majority Shi’a country, like Iran. There are longstanding cultural, religious, and political ties between these two neighboring states, and many Iraqi political figures took exile in Iran during the Saddam years. Speaking of which, Iran was attacked by a U.S.-supported Iraq in the 1980s, in an eight-year conflict that cost them probably a million lives. If I were them, I would be deeply interested in what happens in Iraq…. especially since we’re still the power behind the throne.