Okay. I can see why a lot of Democrats and other progressives and liberals are angry about this compromise on the Bush tax cuts.
But I can also see that the Republicans have already voted against eliminating tax cuts for the richest among us so if Dems stand firmly unified against compromise working folks' taxes will go up, and given the record of how a lot of "Americans" don't get that the Republicans do whatever they can to protect the rich and the Dems do whatever they can to help the rest of us, I doubt that would be spun as anything other than "the Democrats raise your taxes again" which the Republicans have managed to convince many working people of even though the opposite is the truth.
So, even though the president is doing a lousy job of making clear all he and his fellow Democrats have done for those of us who aren't wealthy (it's obvious all he and everyone else in politics have done and are doing for the richest among us) his position in this statement does seem reasoned and justified in terms of getting unemployment extended for the two million for whom it is about to expire and further tax cuts for most of us.
Here's his statement:
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5 comments:
I think you're a little over optimistic in saying "Dems do whatever they can to help the rest of us." Dems sign off on a $1 trillion defense budget every year with no debate. The effect of choosing the Republican version of these cuts over the Democratic version is worth about $36 billion. We piss away more than that on "defense" every two weeks.
all "they" got-to-do i to stop these phony wars
throw all of those soldiers who will then be unemployed into doing the jobs that
the Illegal Aliens are doing because "no American" will stoop so low as to pick lettuce and pee in the spinach!
we've been "sold out" by just another "Empty Suit" /fibbing politician!
Barack becomes W or Clinton, with a conditions based exit from Afganistan in 2014 and now a St. Paul like conversion to "A rising tide lifts all boats". If he also goes along with the unwinding of Obamacare and the shrinkage of the federal government which will likely result in a rebound in employment, he may get reelected. I will not vote for him but many independents will.
Wikileaks to W's Defense
In 2008, our military shipped out of Iraq -- on 37 flights in 3,500 barrels -- what even The Associated Press called "the last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program": 550 metric tons of the supposedly nonexistent yellowcake. The New York Sun editorialized: "The uranium issue is not a trivial one, because Iraq, sitting on vast oil reserves, has no peaceful need for nuclear power. ... To leave this nuclear material sitting around the Middle East in the hands of Saddam ... would have been too big a risk."
Now the mainscream media no longer deem yellowcake -- the WMD Bush supposedly lied about -- a WMD. It was, well, old. It was degraded. It was not what we think of when we think of WMD. Really? Square that with what former Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean said in April 2004: "There were no weapons of mass destruction." MSNBC's Rachel Maddow goes even further, insisting, against the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that "Saddam Hussein was not pursuing weapons of mass destruction"!
Bush, hammered by the insidious "Bush Lied, People Died" mantra, endured one of the most vicious smears against any president in history. He is owed an apology.
When Hollywood makes "The Vindication of George W. Bush," maybe Sean Penn can play the lead.
Larry Elder
Tim, "with no debate" isn't true. With a failure by some Dems to convince enough others to vote against the Defense budget is more the case. And in those defense budgets are plenty of items I would vote for, even though I'm anti-war (like benefits for vets and their families opr more fair pay for them etc.). But you have a point in that many Democrats are as beholden to corporate lobbyists as almost every single Republican. But there is still the difference of the Democrats aiming laws and policies more in the direction of help for the poor and working class while still, for many, trying to protect some corporate interests, while the Republicans in almost every single case aim for the protection of the interests of specific corporations and interests (big oil and Haliburton come to mind for BushCheney) AT THE EXPENSE OF poor and working people. I'm an idealist in terms of philosophy, but in terms of action I opt for pragmatism when idealism is thwarted, and Obama and many Dems have had to make pragmatic choices in order to secure at least a modicum of success for policies and laws that protect the interests of those of us who aren't corporate million-and-billionaire elites (a perfect description of Bush/Cheney etc.).
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