Forgive me for asking, but what the hell are we doing aligning ourselves with these people? We’ve just given them the stamp of official US recognition, and granted them access to billions of dollars of frozen Libyan assets.
Also: can someone explain to me why on Earth we should be giving one nickel of foreign aid to China? (Or to anybody, for that matter, when we have to borrow it in the first place, largely from the Chinese?)
Yes, yes, I’m ranting, I know. Just can’t help it sometimes.
I hang out with a lot of older folks, and I’ve noticed something: the older they get, the more likely they are to think the world has simply gone insane. I wasn’t born until 1956, but I’m already pretty sure they’re right.
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That is how it seems to me, too. But how did the inmates get to run the asylum?
“But how did the inmates get to run the asylum?”
Complacency.
Malcolm, I left this exactly worded comment on a thread I’d sent you (the subject though was different) – ‘When a superpower steps in dogshit it takes a long time for the superpower to realize it then a longer time still to wipe the stink off.’
As for “Forgive me for asking, but what the hell are we doing aligning ourselves with these people?”
I’m afraid I deleted the original source-link, fortunately I recall the timeframe and where to go to find somebody to make the point. Now if only the State Department could remember who it pays and for what:
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/26357/
Be careful what you rant for Malcolm. You might get more than you rant for.
Recall hearing about something called the Sinjar Raid in Iraq (2007), some files were recovered? I’m supposing (most kindly) that in moving Petraeus over to CIA maybe some memos got mis-boxed.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/once-secret-iraqi-documents-offer-lesson-for-libya-20110311
David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, has awarded himself a red badge of courage on account of his pouring ‘aid’ down several African black holes while at the same time insisting that everyone in the UK must be squeezed until the pips squeak.
I’m not sure if the world has gone insane, but if so, I would likely point to different manifestations than you would. I don’t think the country I grew up in would force a President to give a deposition on whether he had sex with an intern, invade a country on phony intelligence, or have one political party use default as a bargaining chip. So maybe the conclusion that things have gone off the rails is a function of age more than ideology.
On the other hand, when I was growing up we were taught how to hide under our desks in case of nuclear attack, people insisted that fluoridated water was a Communist plot, and one American leader after another was assassinated. Benjamin Franklin said “we are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.” I suppose all of these hard workers are a constancy in the human condition.
I’ll remind you that the House passed a bill that would have raised the debt limit; it was defeated by a party-line Democratic vote in the Senate. The President has issued ultimatums about accepting no deal that doesn’t keep things quiet till after the 2012 elections.
Both sides are playing hardball here, and the President is applying a lot of spin at his pressers. Here’s some analysis.
Serious people know that the risk of default is entirely at the discretion of the President, because servicing the debt is a relatively small part of the government’s total obligations. All serious people understand that servicing the debt is not in jeopardy, unless Obama chooses to give that obligation a lower priority than many of the other obligations.
Not only is Obama the unscrupulous one in this instance, but he is also the one who is outrageously scaring Social Security recipients. There is no reason to withhold SS checks, and only if Obama chooses to lower that priority would that occur. Obama is only scaring the perpetually perplexed and fueling the polarization between the political parties.
Well, no. Obama isn’t playing hardball; he’s playing softball, and has given up a mile while the other side has yet to yield an inch. He has accepted unprecedented cuts in the safety net for measly increases in revenue. The Republicans claim to be concerned about debt and the deficits — you hear this from them nonstop — but when there is a deal on the table which will cut $3-4 trillion from the deficit, they refuse to take it because their ideological rigidity precludes them from making even the slightest compromise. It is more important to them that corporations and the wealthy continue to have the lowest tax rates since 1948 than America retain its credit rating or the nation’s fiscal situation be on a sustainable path. Obama has been reasonable, persistent, and far too accommodating, while the Republicans have been obstinate, inflexible, and completely unwilling to compromise. The idea that there is some sort of equivalence between the two sides is pure nonsense.
If the Presidency and the Senate were controlled by Republicans, and the Democrats refused to raise the debt ceiling unless it was paid for exclusively by tax increases — with no cuts in spending — the Republicans, as well as the rest of the country, would justifiably be outraged. That’s not hardball: it’s extortion. Despite the fact that both a majority of citizens, as well as two houses of government,. want a balanced solution, there is a noisy and inflexible minority which would prefer to default on American obligations than to compromise or show the least respect for majority opinion.
Moreover, the right wing case is based on fantasy. We hear that if taxes were to increase in the slightest, the “job creators” wouldn’t create jobs. (I don’t know when “rich” became synonymous with “job creators.” I’m sure there are plenty of rich people who spend their time driving around in limos asking other rich people if they can borrow their Grey Poupon). However, the facts are otherwise. In the past three administrations, the taxes were highest during the Clinton years, which created 23 million jobs. Taxes were drastically lower during the Bush administration, which essentially had no net job growth. Taxes are lower still in the current administration, so you have the absurdity of Republicans complaining loudly about current unemployment rates even though the Obama administration is using their prescription of low taxes.
However, my original point is not about who is more reasonable in the current negotiations, but rather that we should not be having this discussion in the first place. Barney Frank was on TV saying that he didn’t vote for the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, Medicare Part D benefits, or the Bush tax cuts, yet now that the bills are due, the Republicans are acting like they are doing him a favor by paying for what they already bought.
The simple fact is that the time to debate tax and spending policy is during the appropriations process, not when the debt ceiling needs to be raised to pay for things that previous Congresses have appropriated. No matter how sincere one may be about tax and spending policy, it is unconscionable to use the full faith and credit of the US government as a bargaining chip. It is legislative hostage taking of the highest order, and there is a word for it: treason. There is a world of difference between the normal give-and-take of the legislative process and when one side uses its power to sink the government and disgrace the United States because it refuses to compromise. The Republicans and the extreme right wing which controls it are clearly over-playing their hand, and if the government defaults, they’ve handed all three branches of government to the Democrats in 2012. About the only good thing you can say about this sorry and tragic spectacle is that it will likely result in the elimination of the scourge of Tea Party know-nothings from the body politic.
Big Henry: this is also nonsense. If the government can pay some bills but not others, its credit rating will most certainly go down. If you asked a bank for a mortgage but you couldn’t pay your auto loan, do you suppose the bank would give you the loan? Or view you on the same terms as someone who could pay all of the expenses he signed up for?
As for Social Security, the meme that this is scare-mongering is more right wing twaddle. There is only so much money to go around. The government could pay its bond-holders and Social Security recipients, but it could not be able to pay the military, Medicare providers, defense contractors, companies doing infrastructure projects, and all sorts of other things which are essential functions of government. For all of the Tea Party types who claim that not raising the debt ceiling is just a minor inconvenience, I’ve yet to hear any of them propose what choices they would make when the government does not have enough money to pay its bills. As a member of the reality-based community, I’m capable of doing simple arithmetic, which is well in excess of the abilities who claim that we could refuse to pay our bills and everything would be just hunky dory.
Serious people don’t write comments that are 3X the length of the post itself. That is more in line with a fifth-grader who claims to be capable of simple arithmetic and who sputters words like “nonsense” and “twaddle”, instead of wiping the spittle from his chin and sparing other people a hyperbole-ridden tantrum.
No serious person is interested in hearing your marching orders from Batshit-crazy Pelosi.
Good to know that Henry is all over it, like a fat lady on a toilet seat.
For once, Peter, I’m not going to get back down on the mat with you for yet another 10,000-word round of tendentious bickering; it’s too hot. Both sides of this distasteful argument are well-represented on line in the usual places; readers can make up their own minds.
In any case, as I pointed out in a previous post, all this hissing and spitting is over amounts of money that are absolutely meaningless in terms of the actual scope of the problem; the real debt limit comes when people no longer want to lend you money. The amounts the two sides are fussing over are less than the total amount the debt has gone up just since Mr. Obama took office — and the addiction continues, with the administration still piling on freight even as the ship slips under the waves.
As Andy Borowitz tweeted earlier:
You wrote:
Well, we’ll just have to see about that. Another way of looking at it is this remark from John Derbyshire, about the aftermath of the inevitable catastrophe we’ve borrowed and spent ourselves into:
Good to know that Peter’s mother named her son Peter Edward, in honor of his putative father, Dick Ed.
Hot? Who’s hot? My brother and I took our dogs for a walk by the Bay, and the temperature was in the mid-sixties with just the right amount of breeze. I was in Napa yesterday, and it was perfect Hawaiian shirt weather. I can’t understand why you’re grumbling.
The statement that the amount that the “two sides are fussing over are less than the total amount the debt has gone up just since Mr. Obama took office” is incorrect. On 1/20/09, the national debt was $10.6 trillion. Today it is $13.3 trillion. The $2.7 trillion delta is less than the $3-4 billion in cuts which Obama is offering. More importantly, the $2.7 trillion figure is misleading, because it includes the $1.3 trillion in debt in the 2009 budget, which was already in place the day he took office. Obama started off $1.3 trillion in the hole, which is never acknowledged by his right wing critics (I’m loathe to call them conservatives, as the right wing today has little to do with conservatism). They simply blame Obama for the excesses of his predecessor and put it on Obama’s tab. When your mind is made up, there’s no reason to be confused by the facts.
While there is plenty of room for debate on tax and spending policy, it is incorrect to suggest that there are two “sides of this distasteful argument” as regards the debt limit. The fact that two people hold opposing views does not confer legitimacy to both views. There is simply no argument based on facts and logic which supports the contention that government default is a responsible thing to do. The arguments which have been advanced thus far do not withstand the slightest bit of scrutiny, and lead to a proposition so absurd that no thinking person would dare conceive it. The header for this post is apt: we have enough rodeo clowns in the House of Representatives to give any sensible person a bad case of coulrophobia.
While it is tempting to ignore Henry with his usual sputtering incoherence, but it’s worth noting that my middle name happens to be Henry. My Hebrew name is Chaim. (That’s with a hard “ch.” Unlike Michele Bachmann and her reference to choot-spa, it does not rhyme with “chain.”)
It’s not worth noting, Dick Ed.
For poor Henry, all I can do is quote Ben Franklin a second time: if your head is made of wax, don’t walk in the sun.
I thought you said you are capable of simple arithmetic, Dick Ed?
OK, I will restate what I said for those suffering from cranial rectal inversion. The $2.7 trillion delta is less than the $3-4 trillion in cuts.
I’ll also restate my position on the weather. The fog is rolling in and it’s starting to get a little chilly.
For God’s sake, Peter, can you never just pipe down?
No, as of a few minutes ago it was $14,292,517,494,000.00.
No, but as a highly partisan liberal and dedicated Obama cheerleader, you are hardly, thank goodness, the final arbiter of what constitutes “legitimacy”.
There is a deep division here as regards political philosophy and what’s best for the country. Neither party wants to see a U.S. default. If the Democrats were to agree to Republican terms, there’d be no default. And if the Republicans were to agree to Democratic terms, there’d be no default. It takes two to tango. Both sides are unwilling to agree to the other’s terms; both sides are willng to take us to default if they can’t get a deal they like.
You can piss and moan, and blame and insult conservatives, all you want, but there are still two sides to this argument, whether you think so or not, and each side questions the wisdom, in the light of their own philosophical assumptions about what’s best for this country, of the other side’s position. (Were that not so, there wouldn’t be an argument.) That you blithely deny the “legitimacy” of the opposing view, with all the tiresomely predictable hyperpartisan bluster you can summon to the page, makes no difference to anything; it is just your opinion.
You are an intelligent man, Peter. You went to Amherst College, where you wrote papers about special relativity. There are two competing sets of axioms in play here. Axioms are not theorems. You should be able to grasp this.
1) http://www.nationaldebtcounter.us/
2) Obama has already gone 85% of the way to meet Republican demands. Maybe 95%. It is true that if he went 100% of the way, there would be no default. However, at some point you have to draw the line, and the 15 yard line is more than generous. Both sides may be unwilling to accept the entirety of the other side’s position, but one side has made extraordinary concessioss and the other has not budged an inch. There is a difference between governance and hostage taking. To suggest that “it takes two to tango” implies that there is some equivalency in how both parties have acted. There is not.
3) There are two sides to the burning issue of whether the Earth is flat, but only one side is legitimate. The proposition that the responsible thing to do is to allow the government to default, because its consequences will be inconsequential, is not a left vs. right issue. It is a fact vs. nonsense issue. There are plenty of vocal Obama critics — the Chamber of Commerce and Jamie Dimon being two examples — who have been adamant that allowing the country to default is about the worst thing we could do to ourselves. To be legitimate, an argument must be based in fact and logic. The Tea Party argument is not.
From the Treasury itself.
This is pointless. I have nothing further to say. Readers can make up their own minds.
Just as a favor for arithmetically challenged lil’ ‘ol me – would ya’ll mind in your best Gomer Pyle to exclaim Well Golly, what happended to the Libyans Sargeant Carter?
For Dick Ed, all I can do is quote Henry Miller: fuck you.