Capitol Hill
October 12, 2011

Senate Republicans blocked President Obama's $447 billion jobs package on Tuesday, putting the brakes on a bill Mr. Obama has been vigorously promoting over the past month.

The would in essence tax an extra nickel from every dollar a person earns over $2 million in annual income.

Not a single Republican voted for the bill, and two turncoat Democrats voted against it, Ben Nelson (D-NE), and John Tester (D-MT). 

"Democrats' sole proposal is to keep doing what hasn't worked - along with a massive tax hike that we know won't create jobs," Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday.

Republicans blocked the 50-48 majority by the prespammersite new filibuster rule in which a senator only needs to say, "I filibuster," and walk away leaving the needs of the country hanging by the wrists. 

President Obama just swallowed a big spoonful of manure, simpered, and agreed to dismember the bill and send it through ala carte so the Republicans could pass only the provisions that favor big business.

The Dems who aren't complicit are impotent.  The greed is mind-boggling and insane.  This government deserves to be toppled.  The franchise and the Constitution are meaningless.

Was there ever any doubt?

 

"Democrats' sole proposal is to keep doing what hasn't worked - along with a massive tax hike that we know won't create jobs," Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday.

Yep, because those tax CUTS passed in 2004 created SOOOO MANY jobs....overseas...
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/story/2011-10-11/corporate-tax-break/50735860/1

i don't blame the republicans any more than i blame a scorpion for being a scorpion. but the plain complicity of the democrats is so embarrassing, not so much in letting the two of them jump ranks but in allowing the republicans to continue abusing the filibuster. they know they're never going to use the filibuster the same way the republicans are, so there is absolutely no reason not to make them sit there reading a phone book the way they used to. how much of a PR coup would that be? it's just an easy win. but the democrats refuse, because they're throwing the fight. i really hope the Occupy Wall Street movement thoroughly disavows the establishment democrats, it'll ruin the movement the same way the republicans coopted the teabaggers.

incidentally, i've just learned there's an "Occupy Berlin" movement getting started. which, that sounds funny.

Meanwhile, Congress is about to pass MORE "free trade" agreements, which will drain even more out of the job market. 

And Herman Cane is the GOP frontrunner.  What a farce!
::)

Meanwhile, Congress is about to pass MORE "free trade" agreements, which will drain even more out of the job market. 

And Herman Cane is the GOP frontrunner.  What a farce!
::)


Yep, new free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea are about to be passed.  President O'bama will be signing these agreements into law when they reach his desk.

Hey, I forget now... What President was it that signed off on NAFTA? ???

Yep, new free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea are about to be passed.  President O'bama will be signing these agreements into law when they reach his desk.

Hey, I forget now... What President was it that signed off on NAFTA? ???

I thought it was Clinton. And Brian Mulroney was CDN Prime minister at the time.

yup. when you hear "free trade agreement," you should immediately think "outsourcing." globalization is a huge bust -- well, it's great for the one-percenters, it sucks for the rest of us -- and yes, clinton did preside over NAFTA, as well as a ton of other capitulations to the free-marketeers. i actually think francis fukayama hit on more than he knew when he wrote a fawning book about globalization borrowing the marxist-communist concept of "the end of history" but applying it to global free-market capitalism. it's not the left or the right that's the problem per se, it's the poison pill of believing in utopian daydreams about absolutist, non-contingent solutions to the world's problems. you see it on the left and the right: dominionists and ron paulers, yes, but also strict pacifists and a lot of practitioners of identity politics. what happened, though, with the ayn-randian market utopians with the fall of the soviet union, is that the kool-aid got drunk; people actually thought the battle was over and capitalism won and we'd achieved the "end of history" and now we knew capitalism was the answer and all we had to do was practice it with the most extreme vigor we could muster and... problem solved. utopia.

fudgein' orwell nailed it. i mean i know it's treading old ground, but you dig how you can't tell whether the regime in "1984" is left or right? it's not the political divide, left-right, con-lib per se, it's the utopian impulse that's dangerous, and i don't even mean the impulse itself -- it's the putting it into practice. "das kapital" actually strikes me as an abstract, almost idle meditation on the form of perfect government, something philosophers from hobbes to machiavelli to husserl had been doing for centuries, and it would have been delightful as such; i really think marx is fascinating along with a lot of his sproutlings like horkheimer and adorno. but god help you if you pick up these musings and try to turn them into a how-to manual. ditto hitler, what if he had written "mein kampf" to vent his spleen and then burned it up, the way sometimes you write a letter to an ex and then throw it away. maybe he'd have felt better and not gone on to do all he did later and setrasetraso on. but when you start rockin' it stalin-hitler style, turning high-minded human dreams into plans for making the trains run on time, you've got problems.

yup. when you hear "free trade agreement," you should immediately think "outsourcing." globalization is a huge bust -- well, it's great for the one-percenters, it sucks for the rest of us -- and yes, clinton did preside over NAFTA, as well as a ton of other capitulations to the free-marketeers. i actually think francis fukayama hit on more than he knew when he wrote a fawning book about globalization borrowing the marxist-communist concept of "the end of history" but applying it to global free-market capitalism. it's not the left or the right that's the problem per se, it's the poison pill of believing in utopian daydreams about absolutist, non-contingent solutions to the world's problems. you see it on the left and the right: dominionists and ron paulers, yes, but also strict pacifists and a lot of practitioners of identity politics. what happened, though, with the ayn-randian market utopians with the fall of the soviet union, is that the kool-aid got drunk; people actually thought the battle was over and capitalism won and we'd achieved the "end of history" and now we knew capitalism was the answer and all we had to do was practice it with the most extreme vigor we could muster and... problem solved. utopia.

fudgein' orwell nailed it. i mean i know it's treading old ground, but you dig how you can't tell whether the regime in "1984" is left or right? it's not the political divide, left-right, con-lib per se, it's the utopian impulse that's dangerous, and i don't even mean the impulse itself -- it's the putting it into practice. "das kapital" actually strikes me as an abstract, almost idle meditation on the form of perfect government, something philosophers from hobbes to machiavelli to husserl had been doing for centuries, and it would have been delightful as such; i really think marx is fascinating along with a lot of his sproutlings like horkheimer and adorno. but god help you if you pick up these musings and try to turn them into a how-to manual. ditto hitler, what if he had written "mein kampf" to vent his spleen and then burned it up, the way sometimes you write a letter to an ex and then throw it away. maybe he'd have felt better and not gone on to do all he did later and setrasetraso on. but when you start rockin' it stalin-hitler style, turning high-minded human dreams into plans for making the trains run on time, you've got problems.


Karma chameleon!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/13/icon_thumleft.gif


Yep, new free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea are about to be passed.  President O'bama will be signing these agreements into law when they reach his desk.

Hey, I forget now... What President was it that signed off on NAFTA? ???


Yeah, and it cost the dirty old sonofabitch my vote in '96!