START treaty game playing

It's ALL about politics and Obama wins (or losses). That is ALL the Republicans care about. Even going as far as putting their offensive, repulsive, and jealous feelings about our brown skinned intelligent president before our country's national security. They are disingenuous in their arguments whether or not they will vote to ratify the START treaty.  This is political showmanship, GOP grandstanding. They want this treaty ratified when the GOP has a majority in the House of Representatives, that's how pathetically stupid they are. Do they think the American people will then say wooohoooo the GOP did something great!! Yes, that's how stupid Mitch McConnell is...

 Republicans are whining about amendments, well 2 amendments proposed by the Republicans have been defeated. Now what?  More amendments to drag this on? And what if an amendment was agreed upon, it means this, "Any change in the language or substance of the pact would require reopening negotiations with Russia, effectively killing the agreement". So there you have it. The GOP is hell bent on killing this treaty, OR they want the credit for it getting done when they take the House. 

Get on with it Harry Reid. Stop this relentless game playing by those thugs! I'm a C-Span junkie, but listening non-stop to the Democrats on the floor trying to convince the GOP this treaty needs voted on NOW, is just ridiculous! JUST VOTE! FUCK THEM!

DADT

John McCain tried again this morning, one last ditch effort to stop the repeal of DADT. He began his speech by slamming the “bizzaro world” that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) inhabited, and accused Democrats of trying to “jam through” the remaining items — START, the DREAM Act and repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — on an agenda that was “absolutely repudiated” on November 2. “Everything we’re doing is completely ignoring that message,” McCain said. “Maybe it will require another election.”

Why do these republicans keep saying that? They have it ALL wrong! This DADT repeal was something 8 in 10 Americans favored, yet McCain still says the people have spoken, they do not want DADT repealed. What planet does he live on??  77% of Americans were for this repeal. The support cut across partisan and ideological lines with majorities of Democrats, Republicans, Independents, liberals, conservatives and white evangelical Protestants in favor of homosexuals serving openly. Imagine that John McCain...

 In his final act of protest, McCain called it "a very sad day", and imagined a successful vote would lead to "high fives all over the liberal bastions of America". What a disgraceful bigot he is...

 With all his ranting on the Senate floor, whining and crying to the cameras, he said,  “I hope that when we pass this legislation that we will understand that we are doing great damage,”  and we could possibly and probably, as the commandant of the Marine Corps said, and as I have been told by literally thousands of members of the military, harm the battle effectiveness vital to the survival of our young men and women in the military.”

He and other opponents of lifting the ban said the change could harm the unit cohesion that is essential to effective military operations, particularly in combat, and deter some Americans from enlisting or pursuing a career in the military. They noted that despite support for repealing the ban from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, other military commanders have warned that changing the practice would prove disruptive.
This is all about bigotry. These homophobes are clearly thinking about sex! They can't fathom gay men in a fox hole or in a shower room with straight men! I don't know if it scares them or just makes them queasy!


 "Christians" are outraged and are demanding a theocratic repeal of today's vote.  Matt Staver of Liberty Counsel, along with a coalition of anti-gay Christian hate groups (i.e., American Family Association, Family Research Council; Liberty Counsel, Liberty Alliance Action, Vision America, The Oak Initiative, The Call to Action, Concerned Women for America, High Impact Leadership Coalition, Campaign for Working Families, Conservative Action Project, Traditional Values Coalition, and others), who today signed on to a letter vowing to force the next Congress to reverse today's repeal of DADT, American Family Association hate group radio host Byran Fischer, and of course, the Klan loving Tony Perkins of FRC.


The vote was 65 to 31. Eight Republicans voted in favor, Scott Brown, Mark Kirk, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Lisa Murkowski, Richard Burr, George Voinovich, and John Ensign.

President Obama issued a statement saying it was "time to close this chapter" in the nation's history.

"It is time to recognize that sacrifice, valor and integrity are no more defined by sexual orientation than they are by race or gender, religion or creed," he said. "It is time to allow gay and lesbian Americans to serve their country openly."

AMEN

Alot of those 6,000 earmarks are coming from the hypocrite party

 Now seriously, I don't have a beef with the earmark. Some earmarks are actually good for the states. But the GOP has decided with the help of the teabaggers to denounce earmarks and accuse the democrats of being king of pork.
Harry Reid was forced to drop the omnibus bill because 9 GOP'ers decided they must listen to the teabaggers and vote against the bill when previously they said they would vote for it. Fiscal conservatives are calling this a victory. They are such hypocrites! 6,000 earmarks totaling 8 billion dollars had GOP support until they found out teabaggers would go so far as ousting any Senator who voted yes on the measure. Boy those baggers are dead serious aren't they? Except when it comes to stuff like the tax cuts for the rich not being paid for, oh and the 2 wars which are breaking us....
The fiscally conservative Club for Growth predicted that any Republican who voted for the $1.1 trillion spending measure would face a primary challenge ahead of the 2012 elections. Too funny!

Mitch McConnell stood on the Senate floor and actually had the nerve to say members on his side of the aisle had concerns about the way Washington is doing business. This man is a total hypocrite. 

Here's a funny post from REDSTATE... Brian Darling writes:

 "House and Senate appropriators crafted a bill in secret and, just yesterday, provided text to Senators and the American people.  The bill is 1,924 pages long and it will cost you $1.25 trillion, including $8 billion in earmarks.  This appropriations measure is loaded with pork barrel projects, ObamaCare spending and other items on the liberal wish list.  Conservatives are outraged.  Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Jim DeMint (R-SC) are expected to make the Clerk of the Senate read this 1,924 appropriations bill.  Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has identified 6,488 earmarks."

And he put this in his post from Fox News:

Fox News reported that when the bill was shown to the Senate Republican Caucus, Republicans were, for the most part, outraged.

“All hell is breaking loose,” the source told Fox News, noting that Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Jim DeMint of South Carolina were expected to insist the omnibus bill be read in its entirety by the clerk on the Senate floor before a vote is held. They also were expected to seek debate on all earmarks and any amendments.   If the clerk follows the pace of last year’s reading of the health care bill — 53 pages an hour — it will take almost 40 hours to read the omnibus bill.

Wow that is too funny! Come on, the American people aren't stupid! We know Republicans love their pork as much as Democrats! This is hilarious...Just GOOGLE earmarks and see who is loving the pork.

Mr. Reid said that with the failure of the $1.1 trillion spending bill, the only option left would be to pass another short-term measure, called a continuing resolution, which allows the government to continue spending at last year's levels.
Mr. Reid said he would work with Mr. McConnell (R., Ky.) over the next 24 hours to determine the length of a new, short-term spending measure.

To fund the government, Senate Republicans have offered a two-month spending bill that would expire on Feb. 18. By then, the GOP will have assumed control of the House and picked up several seats in the Senate.
The GOP leadership believes that would allow Republicans to influence the levels at which the federal government is funded for the rest of the year. Republicans say they want to roll back funding to fiscal 2008 levels, which they say would save $100 billion over the next decade.


Good luck United States of America. The GOP and the teabaggers are ready to act fiscally responsible....Yea right LOL!!

I knew it....

Is Obama About to Sell Us Out on Social Security? The Political Fallout Would Be Devastating

Obama has signaled that he might include Social Security cuts as part of a grand deficit-reduction deal. If that occurs, expect civil war among the Democrats.

The post at AlterNet where you can read it all.....

When the right congratulates Obama for winning, you know he is losing. For starters, the proposed compromise isn't much of an economic stimulus. If the deal passes Congress, taxpayers will be paying the same income tax rates in 2011 and 2012 as in 2010. No stimulus there.

The only real stimulus is the temporary cut in Social Security taxes, the extension of unemployment insurance plus a few minor tax breaks for regular people, totaling about $200 billion. That's a little more than one percent of a $15 trillion economy. Pretty puny, certainly a lot smaller than the inadequate stimulus of February 2009 when the recession was only beginning to deepen.

Except for the extension of unemployment insurance, which should be done out of common decency, most of the "stimulus" is pure Republican ideology -- stimulate the economy by cutting taxes. If that had worked, the huge tax cuts of the Bush years would have kept the economy out of recession.

A Democratic president with strong progressive principles and political nerve would have taken his party into the mid-term election pledging never to cut Social Security and daring Republicans to take a similar pledge. Instead, Obama appointed a deficit commission with a majority of appointees wanting to cut the Democrats' signature program -- thus blurring party differences on the Democrats' biggest political winner.

I used to be an optimistic person, believing the Democratic Party was the party for middle America. I feel myself turning into a cynical, fearmongering doom and gloomer and I HATE IT! But what are we supposed to think when we read things like this article? All you need to do is look at this Obama/ McConnell tax cut bill to see the GOP destruction that is about to happen. It feels very much like President Obama knows what kind of deal he struck and it all really doesn't matter.....

Bush-era tax cuts extended for the rich,  payroll tax reduction; estate tax exemption level at $5 million, unemployment benefits extensions that do not help the 99ers.....the wool has been pulled over our heads.

I can now confidently say I hate this bill....UPDATED

I'm a progressive and I'm in agreement with MoveOn.org....

I know alot of people are concerned about the unemployment benefits expiring so therefore think they need to side with the president on this HUGE tax cut and spending bill. Not only does MoveOn believe the #1 problem is the cut in payroll tax, making it a trap for Democrats, I think the whole damn thing is a trap. I do not buy the argument the bill is the best Democrats could get from those Republicans. I believe the worst parts of this legislation won't be felt immediately, but rather in the near future as the GOP continues their fight to make the tax cuts permanent and their plan to destroy Social Security. This is not 2003,  I don't know if the will of the people can actually fight the evil machine that is the Republican Party. That's my opinion and I'm comfortable with it....

Problem #1: The deal is a stealth attack on Social Security.The deal will lower the payroll tax—the tax that funds the Social Security trust. This is a trap for Democrats. Republicans have been coming after Social Security for years and this cut is the biggest threat to the vital program in decades. It will cut one-third of Social Security's funding this year alone and when we need to restore the payroll tax back to its current level, Republicans will cry "tax increases" and could gut it permanently. ¹ 

Problem #2: For nearly one in three workers, it's a tax increase.Nearly 50 million working Americans—including all workers making less than $20,000 per year—and millions of federal, state, and municipal workers will see their taxes go up because of the deal.² 

Problem #3: The deal has not one but TWO millionaire bailouts.In addition to extending all the Bush income tax breaks for the top 2%, the deal will slash the estate tax. If Congress did nothing, next year the estate tax would be 55% and apply to everyone inheriting $1 million or more. But the deal reduces it to 35% and only people who inherit more than $5 million will have to pay. This second bailout will give a gigantic tax giveaway to a few thousand of the richest families in the country and add hundreds of billions to the national debt.³

 Problem #4: Unemployment help is insufficient and inadequate.While the deal extends unemployment benefits for another 13 months for people currently receiving it, millions of unemployed workers who've struggled the most and been out of work more than 99 weeks—since the giant Wall Street banks wrecked the economy—will get no help at all under the deal.⁴ It's a gamble that there will be jobs in the next 13 months when the insurance runs out, but the tax cuts will go well beyond that. Better to just pass a stand-alone unemployment extension to help all struggling Americans.

Problem #5: Tax giveaways to the rich are a terrible way to create jobs.Tax breaks for the rich are the least efficient way to create jobs and help the economy grow. In fact the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says extending all tax cuts would lower unemployment only 0.1% to 0.3% over the next year⁵ and that the cost of the tax deal would be $900 billion over the next five years.⁶

---

Sources:

1."Tax Cut Deal A Hidden Threat To Social Security" The Huffington Post, December 8, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/08/tax-cut-deal-a-hidden-thr_n_793983.html

2. "Obama-Republican Deal Could Mean Tax Hike For One In Three Workers" The Huffington Post, December 10, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/10/obamarepublican-deal-coul_n_795187.html

3. "Estate tax deal: worst part of a bad tax compromise" The Christian Science Monitor, December 7, 2010
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Tax-VOX/2010/1207/Estate-tax-deal-worst-part-of-a-bad-tax-compromise

4. "Unemployment benefits: Extension won't help '99ers'" The Christian Science Monitor, December 7, 2010
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2010/1207/Unemployment-benefits-Extension-won-t-help-99ers

5. "The Deal" Paul Krugman, The New York Times, December 7, 2010
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/the-deal/

6. "CBO score shows tax plan ups deficit $900 billion in 5 years" CNN.com, December 10, 2010
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-10/politics/tax.plan_1_tax-cuts-tax-plan-bush-era-tax?_s=PM:POLITICS


UPDATE;  From CBS news:

 The Senate passed the tax bill today,

The first priority for many Democrats who want to alter the bill is changing the estate tax provision in the bill. The president agreed to a request from Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) that would allow estates worth up to $10 million to be exempt from paying any taxes at all with estates worth more taxed at just 35 percent.
House Democrats passed a bill a year ago that would exempt estates only up to $3.5 million and taxing them after that at 45 percent and they are fighting to insert that language into this bill. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) is leading the effort to change the Senate provision. He calls it "egregious" and says that it won't create jobs and adds "15 billion dollars to the deficit and benefits just 6,600 families a year." Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.), who offered the amendment, says he think it will get a vote.
But now Democrats also want to change other items that were supposed to be sweeteners for Democrats like the 13 month extension of unemployment benefits and the two-year payroll tax holiday that cuts everyone's social security taxes by 2 percent.
On unemployment insurance, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) says that it should be extended from 13 months to two years so that it is not seen as less important than the two-year extension of tax cuts for the wealthy. He admitted last night after talking with the president over the phone that it's a delicate balance.
"Right now it's a question of how much can be changed without ruining the president's efforts to get this thing through" Cummings said.

On the payroll tax holiday, members like Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) argue that the one-year payroll tax holiday would force the government to borrow money to make up for the losses in the Social Security Trust Fund, that the tax cut would likely never expire and that it would jeopardize Social Security's solvency. "I plan to present an amendment asking that the payroll tax provision is stricken from the bill" Doggett said.
If any of the amendments or changes pass the House, the bill would have to pass the Senate again and its passage could be in doubt just over two-weeks from all the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and the middle class expiring.
While the loudest Democrats oppose many of the provisions in the Senate-passed bill, there is support for the measure among fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats. Thirty-one House Democrats sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi last night asking her to quickly schedule a vote, put aside partisan differences, and "act to send it directly to the president's desk without delay."
If those members vote against changing the tax bill, along with most Republicans, it will be very difficult for House Democrats to change the bill.
Opposition among Republicans also mounted today, with Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) heading to the House floor first thing to announce his opposition to the package. His objection? That unemployment insurance provisions are unpaid for and that the tax cuts are not permanent so they will not help businesses plan.
"Uncertainty is the enemy of our prosperity" Pence said. "Frankly, we can provide assistance to people struggling in this economy by making the hard choices to pay for it without adding to the national deficit."


Pences' statement made me (((((shudder)))) 

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CDM takes no shit!

Check out fellow blogger and friend Complaint Department Managers post about a run-in with a conservative that started out funny, then turned pathetically sad.  The old geezer uses his military service as a sorta badge of honor, but there is NO honor in the things he says about President Obama and the office of the president. If this guy is so proud of his service and his conservative views then he needs to take a step back and examine his heart, he misplaced it!  He has no respect for our president and no respect for anyone who does not share his faith, military standing and party affiliation. I wonder if he respected Dubya?

my head is exploding...

Last night at midnight I had a "jumping off the Obama bandwagon" post all prepared. I'm glad I decided to wait til I could gather my thoughts and think somewhat clearer before I clicked that publish button. My bloggy friends here are as divided on this tax cut legislation as the democratic party is. So whatever I say here will be hated by some and agreed upon by others. I have decided I will stand with President Obama.

That doesn't mean I agree 100% with this bill,  I think what Bernie Sanders said in the filibustering speech could help fix some of the things progressives have a problem with, like the estate tax, tax cuts for the rich, So


ABOVE..That was yesterdays work on this 4th draft, and above that was 2 days ago...I can't think straight this week for some reason. All kinds of talk being thrown around, different opinions being tossed around, Obama, Clinton, Sanders...I'm jealous of those who have made up their minds and stand by their convictions. I'm floundering and wobbling....

This morning I'm back to my original opinion on Obama and the legislation. I think the rethuglicans have taken him to the woodshed on this proposed bill that he calls a framework. I believe it is another massive stimulus that will only empower the thugs next year. They have it all planned out, they will take their case to the Americans on this bloated deficit problem, which they have contributed to BTW, and they will start with entitlements, mainly Social Security. They are on the path to wipe out SS and Obama seems oblivious to this. Bringing in Bill Clinton yesterday to give credibility to the presidents proposals was to me a sign of desperation. The public is not happy with the way Obama crafted this bill on the laps of the rethuglicans, so he presumes Bill Clinton can calm the fears and convince the people this legislation is the best he can do at this moment. So by giving the GOP their demands  the democrats are adding their demands to the point this bill is exploding the deficit at a time we are trying to get it under control. 

The only person I see with any common sense and clear thinking is Bernie Sanders.....during his 8 hour speech he faulted the payroll tax holiday calling it a dangerous step that could hurt Social Security and also spoke on the "overly generous proposal" on the estate tax which would be reinstated at a rate of 35% on everything above the first 5 million of an individuals estate and everything above the first 10 million of a couples estate, He said "this is not a tax on the rich, this is a tax on the very, very, very rich"

He has it right when he screams CHINA, CHINA, CHINA!!!

Will I be back here in a few days with a different slant? Maybe...

I was Googling 'why isn't the tea party enraged over this huge spending bill', and stumbled upon this,
I like what she says here...


"See, politicians are, to borrow the now politically correct Jerry Brown word, whores. They can be bought. And the Republicans, in particular, are cheap whores at that.
There will be something for everyone in this bill–this is the Stimulus that Obama should have put forth to begin with but instead paid off the states and parasitic unions and states instead. This stimulus might actually jolt the economy while spending the next generation into abject oblivion.
It had to be done NOW, though, because the party is over for the Republicans and Democrats. Come January, the American people will be angered if they see Republicans spend like this.
This bill will get a bunch of them primaried again. They. Don’t. Care.
Just like the Democrats didn’t care about Obamacare. The Republicans are hoping you don’t notice what they’re doing here. And they’ll try and blame the Democrats.
They can say the bill passed in the lame duck Congress if the economy still stays bad. If the economy turns around, well, they can say they forced the Democrats to pass the bill. They also hand Obama the Presidency, but hey, this is all about Right Now.
Expedient and indulgent, our elected officials are a disgusting group.
Yes, yes. I know, this is politics. But I’m sorry, it makes me want to throw up when I hear Republicans talking about cutting spending and then okay a florid spending bill because they know their little treats would cause howling rage if they owned the House and put forth such a stinker a couple weeks from now.
My solution? Scuttle the whole thing.


.in fact I like every word of what she says.