Words are cheap. In the case of teabaggRs, they not only have no value; they have no meaning. As they continue to blame President Obama for everything that's happened since they got their way (think about it: they got, in the words of John Boehner, "98%" of what they wanted in the budget catastrophe, prior to which they blocked pretty much everything else Obama has tried to do), it's as obvious as a forest fire what's happened, and Fareed Zakaria says it well:
We've downgraded ourselves. We've demonstrated to ourselves, the world, to global markets that our political system is broken and that we are incapable of implementing sensible public policy.
...What the deal does is once again kick tough choices down the road, this time to a Congressional supercommission that will have to come up with a larger plan to reduce our debt. And it does nothing to spur growth, and, without growth, the debt and the deficit will expand well above current projections.
... Democrats now feel they need to mirror the Tea Party's tactics because they worked and they are becoming unyielding on any cuts to entitlement programs like Medicare. Republicans, emboldened by the success of their bullying, have closed ranks more solidly around a no-tax agenda... More than two years into the Obama administration, hundreds of key positions in government remain vacant for lack of Senate confirmation. The Treasury Department, for example, had to handle the global financial crisis, recession, bank stress tests, the automaker bailouts, as well as its usual duties with about a dozen of its senior positions, almost its entire top management, vacant, nobody in there.
Senate rules have been used, abused and twisted to allow constant delay and blockage. The filibuster, which was historically employed about once a decade, is now a routine procedure that allows the minority to thwart the will of the majority. In 2009, Senate Republicans filibustered a stunning 80 percent of major legislation. ...
Is that how a democracy should function?
No, it's not. It can't. And what's happening now is exactly what I and others have predicted: TeabaggRs, having successfully and deliberately seen to it that the economy cannot recover, having sabotaged their country as a game plan, are now blaming Obama for the very results they produced.
Of that, there's no question. The only question is whether even this current calamity is enough to wake up the teabagging idiots and those who enable them. My guess? No fricking way.
PT: Thanks for your comment, which I unintentionally deleted instead of published (it was a little snarky, however.) I'll include the link you provided, below. Meanwhile, from the writer's own website, here's what he says about himself (as opposed to being some sort of "economic text:"
ReplyDeleteRandall Hoven is a frequent contributor to The American Thinker. He has also been published in The New York Post, the American Conservative Union's Battleground, and the Alton Telegraph.
His pieces have been cited, discussed and/or praised by Rush Limbaugh, David Limbaugh, Mark Steyn, Mark Levin, Mark Tapscott (Washington Examiner), Jay Ambrose, Diana West, Andy McCarthy, Neal Boortz, The American Spectator, Fox News, Investors Business Daily, and Donald Rumsfeld.
Not exactly a balanced group, eh? No surprise, though, when one reads the article, full of, what's the word?, snark. I'd take the time to provide links to authors who point out the obvious fallacies of the "we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem" but I'm sure you know we could do dueling links till the market tanks (oh, wait, it did, because S&P said we can't agree to raise revenue).
Instead of providing such links, maybe we should look back, oh, about ten years, and see which philosophies led to balanced budgets...
Nevertheless, I'm glad to see you're willing to comment. Given a less shaky finger, and, yes, perhaps a little less sillisnark, I'll publish the next one.
For others, here's the link PT provided.
P.S., PT: Here's a link to a paper by Bruce Bartlett on the Reagan tax cuts. It's fair and balanced, I'd say. He was, as you know, a Reagan economic adviser. From the linked page you can click to download the pdf.
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