Am I crazy? I don’t understand why Obama agreed to sign the short-term deal last night. If I were him, I think I would have refused. Doing this renewal for a short time nearly in shores that we are going to be back at this later on. Just from a tactical standpoint, if I were him, I would have refused to play the Republicans’ game.
Why did Obama sign off last night?
Ted Rall
http://rall.comTed Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Says the guy who wrote a recent post about how he’d like to see the US default because it would hasten the collapse of the system.
So, yeah — if you were Obama, you’d hasten the collapse of the system. Makes sense. That’s why you’re not Obama.
You know the answer to the question, Ted……because at the end of the day, they are all in this heist together. Ted Cruz states “I didn’t lose, America lost”….well yes, we did, but not for the reasons Ted Cruz is thinking…..we’ve been losing for 40 years. When were we ever ‘winning’ in this society? Certainly at different times life was good for some group or another, but the majority of humans at any given time live are getting shafted.
So the media can say that the Democrats “won” or whatever, but we all lost. I would have preferred to see a default so that we could finally have this party out in the open. Republicans can still act like all they did was lose a political argument. No accountability, no responsibility…we are ruled by sociopaths.
Point of Inquiry (and not to be a grammar nazi, I assure you), do you use a voice recognition software to post? The punctuation of this post seems odd for a writer, and then it also has ‘in shores’ instead of ‘ensures’ which suggests a voice recognition error.
Aggie: Yes, I do use voice recognition software sometimes, especially when I’m trying to work on my iPhone. The keys are just too small for my fat fingers. It leads to some pretty funny errors. For example, I have the option on my phone to toggle back-and-forth between French. Sometimes I make a mistake and I speak in English but the setting is in French. So the sentence “sometimes I use dictation software” in French looks like this:
Details on top utilities and program to dictate sale
Sometimes railleuses dictation ça.
Before the shutdown started, Boehner said he’d NEVER let the US hit the debt ceiling. He waffled about how long he’d keep the government ‘slimmed down’ (I agree with Fox on this one), but he didn’t dare let the US hit the debt ceiling.
Federal Law says the US has to spend $3.883 trillion, and can take in no more than $3.215 trillion, but could NOT run a deficit after
17 October5 February. That’s a contradiction. No matter what, once the debt ceiling is hit, a US law is being broken. And no one knows what the impact of that might be.The Treasury says its computers can’t handle a breach of the debt ceiling. So it has no idea what would happen if the ceiling got hit. The Treasury says it’s unthinkable. So it won’t think about it. And neither should anyone else.
Net: The Republicans lost. Totally. Completely. With no mitigating factors. And, if they try a shutdown in January, they’ll lose again. So, since they already know they’ll lose, Obama said that there cannot be a repeat.
And one gocomics comment said that the bill that got passed makes it impossible to refuse to raise the debt ceiling: it’s only until 5 February, but then it automatically gets raised and there’s nothing the Republicans can do to stop it.
So Obama got everything he wanted. And more. And Boehner probably knew this from the start, and had the ‘slimdown’ to mollify enough Republicans that he could keep his seat, knowing he’d back down completely on 16 Oct.
Michael: I wouldn’t say that the Republicans lost. Not at all. For one thing, they get to do this all over again in a few months. Right now, pundits say that they got burned too badly to do it again, but I wouldn’t be so sure. They got burnt the last couple of times they did it too and it didn’t stop them. The tea party seems further emboldened by the fact that this so-called sequestration remains in effect. That is de facto Angela Merkel-style austerity.
They may have taken a hit in the polls, but we’re living under their policies economically. Which as far as I can tell seem to be pretty much be the same as Obama’s policies.
To employ the metaphor of the schoolyard bully, Obama has finally realized that he looks like a chump. So he made a half-hearted sissy-slap effort and, by luck, managed to stagger his opponent the bully with a lucky shot. Now, rather than close in and start beating the daylights out of the bully, he’s backing away. When the bully recovers, he’s gonna go absolutely nuts.