barack obama

Monday night, House Speaker John Boehner took to the airwaves to taught his deficit reduction plan. Of course the left didn't like this plan, but they aren't alone:

The debt ceiling deal introduced by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) would save, by one measure, roughly $850 billion over the course of ten years and just $1 billion in 2012 -- two metrics unlikely to satisfy the most conservative members of his conference.

The Congressional Budget Office, which is the official scorekeeper of legislation, released its analysis of the Budget Control Act of 2011 on Tuesday afternoon. The findings were damaging enough that an hour later, Boehner's office told reporters it would rewrite the bill to achieve a more favorable scoring. Hours after that, GOP leadership announced it was delaying a vote on the plan until Thursday.

Measured against March 2011 government expenditure levels, the Boehner proposal, as currently written, would reduce the deficit by $850 billion during the next decade, according to the CBO. Measured against January 2011 government spending levels, the bill would reduce budget deficits by roughly $1.1 trillion during that same time period.

And it isn't just the "most conservative" corners of his party rejecting this plan. We see Americans as a whole wanting something more along the lines of an Obama plan than a Boehner plan:

Most Americans would like to see a mix of spending cuts and tax increases be part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling, a new poll finds, aligning the majority with President Barack Obama's position.

One of the long known goals of Osama bin Laden was to financially break the United States:

A key facet of bin Laden's anti-American warfare has always been economic. It's a lesson he drew from the Afghan-Soviet war, in which he first served as a financier of mujahidin efforts and then as a fighter. He watched the Soviet Union withdraw from Afghanistan in defeat and then dissolve altogether in 1991. Bin Laden asserted on multiple occasions that the mujahidin were responsible for destroying the Soviet empire. Whether or not he's right, he clearly believed that the high costs imposed by the Afghan-Soviet war prevented the Soviet Union from adapting to other challenges, such as grain shortages and a collapse in world oil prices.

When you consider the hundreds of billions we spend every year in defense, including a large chunk of money just for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and couple that with our dwindling economy, we can see this is one goal he might achieve, though he didn't live to see it.

Thinking of that makes stories like this all the more infuriating:

Hard-charging Republicans who rallied voters last year with cries of "Stop the spending, ban the earmarks" are quietly offering a more familiar Washington refrain now they're in Congress – not in my backyard.

Bob Schieffer, far from being some member of the “liberal media”, tonight accused Trump’s assertion of bordering on racism:

Donald Trump has moved on from the "birther" conspiracy to allege President Barack Obama didn't get good enough grades to warrant entry to Harvard Law School, an assertion that CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer called absurd on the "CBS Evening News" on Wednesday.

Us on the left have been saying this all along and now the man in the spotlight of the “War Against Labor” has admitted it – eliminating collective bargaining does not save money!

Like a dog going at a bone, U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, didn't stop until he got the answer he was looking for from Gov. Scott Walker during the governor's testimony Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Kucinich said he could not understand how Walker's bill to strip most collective bargaining rights from nearly all public workers saved the state any money and therefore was relevant to the topic before the committee, which was state and municipal debt.

[SNIP]

"How much money does it save Gov. Walker?" Kucinich demanded. "Just answer the question."

"It doesn't save any," Walker said.

Again – the reason for this law was purely political. The right didn’t like the unions supporting Barack Obama in 2008, so instead of trying to find ways to appeal to organized labor, the right decides to hurt them.

Still don’t believe it? Well just ask Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader, Scott Fitzgerald.

The blindness of the right is mindboggling at times. Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey has a post up entitled “Taxpayers to Obama: Keep your hands off our deductions”. Here’s what Ed says:

In his speech on Wednesday, Barack Obama suggested that eliminating some tax deductions might be necessary to close the budget deficit, at least on a means-tested basis.  Gallup’s latest poll taken after the speech shows the political risk in pushing that idea.  Large majorities support the deductions Obama mentioned in the speech, even when told it would help close the federal budget deficit:

But when you look at what part of the Gallup article Ed quotes, you see something totally different:

Americans make it clear they want to keep common federal income tax deductions, regardless of whether the proposed elimination of those deductions is framed as part of a plan to lower the overall income tax rate or as a way to reduce the federal budget deficit. No more than one in three Americans favor eliminating any of the deductions in either scenario. …

Budget plans that call for lower overall tax rates, such as the one proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan, would essentially require that popular deductions be eliminated, basically trading off one tax break for another. President Obama’s commission on deficit reduction last December called for eliminating deductions, including the one for mortgage interest, as part of its plan (ultimately rejected) to reduce the federal budget deficit.

Erick Erickson on CNN:

here is not in any way, shape, or form any rational explanation for the United States engaged in Libya to do nothing except for one I can think of — Barack Obama's re-election.

…

Suddenly Obama can look Presidential again — all through manufacturing the need for American involvement where there was no need. Barack Obama wants to be re-elected. The best playbook for his re-election is that of Bill Clinton. But Clinton had a government shutdown and Kosovo. In the absence of either, Barack Obama must manufacture them.

And he has.

From a 1998 Washington Post article:

In August 1998, when [Clinton] ordered missile strikes in an effort to kill Osama bin Laden, there was widespread speculation — from such people as Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) — that he was acting precipitously to draw attention away from the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal, then at full boil. Some said he was mistaken for personalizing the terrorism struggle so much around bin Laden. And when he ordered the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House after domestic terrorism in Oklahoma City, some Republicans accused him of hysteria.

Whenever a Democrat takes military action, the right takes to their aluminum foil hats to create any conspiracy theory they can. Of course Erickson is one of those that still believes we found WMD in Iraq, despite the Bush administration even admitting we never did. Aren’t you glad he works for the “most trusted name in news”?

There has been a lot of talk that President Obama might be open to some sort of deal to cut Social Security benefits. Well that is a very bad idea:

President Barack Obama's apparent willingness to consider cuts in Social Security benefits may be winning him points with Washington elites, but it's killing him with voters, who see the program as inviolate and may start to wonder what the Democratic Party stands for, if not for Social Security.

That's the conclusion of three top progressive pollsters who spoke to reporters Wednesday at a briefing sponsored by the Economic Policy Institute, the Century Foundation and Demos.

Even more interesting is that the poll is finding the public not trusting the Democrats on Social Security as much as they did before, while the trust in Republicans is on the rise. During that time frame we saw Republicans going out to the angry town halls and saying that they would not touch Social Security. Of course those of us who really follow politics know that is far from the truth. This was just another example of “snake oil salesman” tactics by the GOP.

So hopefully we won’t hear the President talk about Social Security at the SOTU next week. If he does then he should lay out a plan to restore all the borrowed money to the system and legislation that will prevent lawmakers from using the money for anything they want. That is our money and it should be kept as such.

Can’t say I’m surprised by this:

A federal judge in Virginia ruled Monday that the individual mandate contained in the health care law passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama this year is unconstitutional.

The judge found in favor of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who brought this suit separately from the other state Attorney Generals suing the federal government over the law.

I personally have been against these mandates since their inception. Requiring the people to purchase a product from a company really seems to go against everything this country stands for. I know some try to use the “auto insurance” example, but that doesn’t fair. You can choose not to drive, but choosing not to live – well that is also illegal.