Obama just handed complete control of government

over to the cons. For the republicans,this is one of the biggest political victories they have ever seen. They are virtually assured control of both Houses of congress and the oval office after the 2012 elections. Obama just sold the country down the river.....

touched, the baseline issue won't be a problem. They could demand hundreds of billions in limits to itemized deductions for the rich, and many loophole closings. They could also demand an extension of unemployment benefits, etc.

Now, the Republicans might not agree to this. But that means the trigger goes into affect, which decimates Defense without touching entitlement benefits and many programs for the poor.

In other words, there would be bipartisan support for repealing the trigger.

See slide 2 of his presentation tonight: http://www.speaker.gov/UploadedFiles/3-7-31-11-Debt-Framework-Boehner.pdf

read it yourself.

Welcome to DU. And ignore.

There's no way from here to there without touching either defense or revenues.

.. no, they won't. How many times will you have to get fucked to get it?

But, yeah, that's right.

when extended unemployment benefits end and the job outlook for millions hasn't improved, in fact gotten worse. What happens then, Mr. President? Did the 15 million unemployed Americans fall off yours and your BFF's radar?

will just make it worse.

not just here, but around the world.

Please explain why that would have been the better choice.

was a series of interbank loans from the Fed, which also has emergency powers to loan to the USG regardless of the debt limit.

There was no real danger of default. This has been high-level kabuki theatre. Please see the discussion of the Fed's emergency powers in the thread, here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1604107#1604160

I'm not that anonymous, and I've been published in the "legitimate" media on finance and banking issues, including Foreign Policy and Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities Magazine.

The difference is, I don't have an institutional agenda to lie here. DU is a great place to tell it like you really see it.

Nothing that was "saved" in this deal could possibly be worth what's been lost...and likely lost for good...

as the 14th amendment doesn't exactly allow that, and I think that was what the 'baggers hoped for all along.

He just went on being president.

inasmuch as it is necessary for congress to write and pass legislation, and the president to sign it into law. The impeachment process made everything a partisan battle, nothing got done, good government suffered greatly, the approval ratings of congress plummeted, and it was a big part of the bitter turning of voters against the democratic process, I think.

All of which played at least a part in the dot-com debacle, and bush. Which brings us to the current thoroughly screwed up age.

I think the 14th amendment would have played right into the 'baggers hands, and they seem to be fine with whatever screwed up mess the rest of us end up in.

the baggers will reject it because after all their real objective is to bring down the country.

Only time will tell.

the Republicans and Obama own it.

Just a couple of hundred million.

And nobody really believes the war machine will lose a cent.

... and he's been doing it for the last thirty months.

Correction: utter fucking nonsense.

Support your ridiculous claim.

It's gonna be really tough going door-to-door next year with that slogan for Democrats. For the Republicans, it looks like a winner.

Do we need to support the claim any further? Politically, it's not ridiculous at all to say this was a disaster for Obama and the Democratic Party. He will get no credit and only blame outside the beltway for this debacle.

(*With credit to elehhhhna.)

on Tues., if it comes to that. The whole idea of a federal shutdown or Treasury checks not being mailed was kabuki theater to pressure Congress to go along with these cuts.

Why do you think no one repeats it but some idiot bloggers?

The official QE2 figure is $600 billion, but in fact as came out in recent months, the actual aggregate amount of liquidity pumped into the system during QE2 was $16T. Source, GAO study, (July 2011): http://sanders.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/GAO%20Fed%20Investigation.pdf, related, Se. Bernie Sanders press release, http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3 . That includes short-term trading in T-bills on the Repo market, which is a primary means by which the NY Fed injects liquidity (read profit) into the banking system.

I suggest you go back and take a look. Start by Googling QE2 -- the Wiki is pretty good -- and then "Repo market". You might also take a look at Zero Hedge and some of the other financial sites.

No one wants to talk about all this - particularly the Fed's emergency powers to create electronic money without creating new Treasuries -- because it puts the lie to the official narrative that come Tues. we're in some sort of intractible brisis for which there is no institutional escape mechanism - that is the biggest lie of them all. There will be no default because the Fed is an extra-constitutional body that was created to manage political problems like this by non-political means, so the pols won't sink the U.S. and global banking systems.

Which is absurd on its own, but there simply was no transfer of 16T to anybody, and it's frankly dishonest to claim there was.

secondary markets back to the primary dealers which move it into various investment vehicles, many of them offshore.

It gathers value at each step, while some steps may be riskier than others (some markets, like the Repo, have no risk other than "fails" --the refusal of Goldman and some other big banks to trade the T-bills they held in Q2 and Q3 '08, which killed the principal Repo marketmaker, Lehman Bros.). But, the $16T in value created for big banks in the value chain is quite real.

Sanders didn't claim that the Fed printed $16T in $100 bills and handed them out to men in top hats on the corner of Wall and Broad Streets. That piece of misinformation (to which you may refer) was a bastardization by people who don't understand the money markets.

Bush had basically abdicated by that point

read up on your history, please

:shrug:

The "Wrong!" in your subject line also claims my post was incorrect. Which, of course, it was not.

but there are many others historical sources as well; it was candidate Obama who phoned senators to get TARP passed on the 2nd vote

You obviously don't have a grasp on even the broader contours of the subject. Go and look it up, and come back later, if you like.

I was initially responding to the claim that Repubs could hang Obama with wall street bailouts and bank bailouts (and then bailing on Grandma) by pointing out that all that shit began when the GOP was in charge. That fact, of course, won't stop the repubs from trying to use it, but a competently-crafted response should be able to neutralize that, given the facts of the matter.

recently (at least as far as the identity of the larger recipients, and the amounts).

The fact of the matter is that Obama bailed out the banks on a scale that dwarfs what most people still believe, and then threatened to withhold mailing SS checks, even though he knows that the Fed will bailout the Treasury and the agencies, if need be.

I agree the crisis was created under old management, but I think this President -- and the Senate leadership -- has just totally lost what was left of my respect and patience, and a lot of other Americans.

Mitt Romney's campaign came to an end tonight.

Every Republican running for office, including and especially those running for the President are going to be asked the question "do you support increasing the debt?".

If they answer 'no' then they will lose all support of the Republican establishment, the money, the endorsements, everything.

If they answer 'yes' then they will lose the support of the Tea Party wing and become the object of their unbridled hatred.

Bachman will double down and increase the ante and will take it to Romney directly in the debate and while it will win him New Hampshire he will lose Iowa and South Carolina, and the Southern belt.

This will open up a huge hole for Perry who will take up the Bachman chorus but will be badly damaged by the continuing drip of nuttiness.

By politicizing the debt ceiling the Republicans have openned up and made permanent a huge crevis that will devour many Republican candidates in the acrimonous primaries and for the nutjobs that survive offer up sacrificial cows for the general election. By not having another vote on the debt ceiling the issue on the next round will be either cuts to programs that the country wants or a reasonable taxation policy.

But then again this is the guy who couldn't win the nomination and won't get elected President.

killed the link in people's minds between the Democratic Party and the New Deal.

I'd say, we just got lost something way more significant than Crazy Bachman or Pretty Perry could ever imagine - the historical good will and thanks of the American people.

It's why Boehner won't be speaker for much longer, too.

Vietnam and Iraq also destroyed everyone in government who touched it.

This process has been a terrible experience for a lot of voters. If you ask them do you plan to fight about this and risk economic damage to the country, threaten to change the constitution, etc. like your party did last year? What exactly will they say?

He's reelected by a "well-oiled" machine in Texas. I don't think that is transferable to the national electorate after Bush. Perry is truly the crony's crony's crony. A sell-out's sell-out. The Republicans have nobody.

Good.

It's too bad that people can't think a little farther down the road to the larger implications.

though I feel the disappointment and passion for having to live with the compromise on issues that I feel very deeply about saving. It is eating at my guts. I'm not happy about it but I have known for the last two months that I probably wouldn't be happy.

This is not a huge political victory for the Republicans because they have shown themselves to be so ugly and anti-people in the process. So willing to destroy. They've used tactics that will not be forgotten, because we will be around to remind everyone. (It isn't a done deal even now) They will feel a backlash.

It's not as if Obama won't have a harder time, and maybe that is good, I don't know. But The *political* damage they have brought to this country while we have been used and held hostage will not just disappear overnight because their pathetic and delusional talking points will be blared out all over the place.

They love themselves. They think they are the shit.
But they have never been in tune with how the voters truly feel. And frankly, the people don't think they are *THE shit*...the people just think they ARE shit.

he has veto power - and their bills would not get through the Senate anyway.

Where have you been? The Right, conservatives, whatever you call them, have been in power since 1968. They had a problem for awhile after Kennedy was killed because they didn't anticipate that the Vietnam War would become controversial. That was their cash cow. I think history has been transparent. I did notice that President Kennedy was shot in the head in Dallas when I was 15. LBJ played ball and gave the defense industry a big expensive war. RMN thought he'd been elected Emperor and overplayed his hand. GRF was a nice placeholder to calm down the electorate. JEC was a man of peace and deep intelligence that the Right was mightily worried about when he went to Washington in '76. And they made sure that he was smeared and second-guessed and unfairly gossiped about, by the media, and especially ABC, for his entire term in office. RR was literally pushed on the country by NBC, ABC, and CBS. He was sold like apple pie on the 4th of July. Carter was talking about malaise. Except he wasn't. Carter never uttered the word malaise; he actually gave a speech about the emptiness of consumption and his polls numbers increased over 10 points. The media sold it as a disastrous "malaise" speech, but that never existed. I don't believe that Reagan would have been successful in 1980 if there had been an internet. The nation was already in a situation where right wing voices prevailed everywhere. The Fairness Doctrine went out the window. The intelligence agencies that had been under investigation in the 70's, went back to regular business under Reagan. The next Democrat was Bill Clinton, and we know how he was hounded for 8 years and there was a media feeding frenzy. That shameful impeachment should live in infamy. Then we got Bush and Cheney, under less than honest circumstances for TWO consecutive elections. But that administration was so inept and overwhelmingly evil that people got scared and voted for Obama. The Right just doesn't know what to make of him. He had to stay alive, but I'm pretty sure they never know if he got the best of them and is holding back. Personally, I think he's pretty audacious. And there's no doubt in my mind that he's one of us. He's a brave man to stand up to power in what ways he can manage it. No President has had real power since Kennedy was murdered on Elm Street.

That's not a conspiracy theory. That's the history I've watched.

"Carter never uttered the word malaise; he actually gave a speech about the emptiness of consumption and his polls numbers increased over 10 points. The media sold it as a disastrous "malaise" speech, but that never existed."

This is the corporate media I've lived with all my fifty-plus years. As wrong about everything of significance as it's possible to be while using more facts than fantasy. Reagan merely legalized the bias they were showing before that.

That would be monumentally fucking stupid and self-destructive of them.

CC&B is out, entitlements are protected from across the board cuts (rendering the cuts pointless from a deficit standpoint), the debt ceiling is extendable past the election, and revenues are in the mandate of the committee. It's better than I thought anybody would get Boehner to go for.

This is what passes for "constructive" criticism here now?