Finally someone on the Democrat’s side use the key words. The Republican’s plan is a jobs killer. I have been trumpeting the idea all over this blog for weeks if not months that the jobs killer is the failure to get rid of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Pelosi doesn’t say it in quite that way, but she’s close enough for starters.

Considering how much air time Mitch McConnell (minority leader in the Senate) gets, I wonder why we haven’t been hearing more from Nancy Pelosi (minority leader in the House) all along. From the time she was Speaker Of The House, it has been apparent that she is the only one in a leadership position on the Democratic side that has the guts to say what needs to be said.

The article, The Money Melodrama in Washington, by Richard Reeves starts with the following premise:

Stating the obvious: Politicians know politics; that’s their business. Business is not their business, and any discussion about American presidents and economics has to begin with this discouraging word: American politicians, with a very small number of exceptions, don’t know anything about economics.

That is also one of the main contentions of my political blog here.

I think Reeves makes a common mistake in the following sentence:

In Washington, during the deficit debates for the past few weeks, politicians are guessing—as I think most economists and pundits are—and they seize on almost any deficit idea that sounds good at the time.

Politicians are guessing which is the right direction to go, cuts or tax increases for the wealthy.  I think most economists are guessing about a different matter.  They are guessing the size of the debacle when the politicians choose the well known wrong road.  Only diehard economists like the ones at the Chicago School of Economics dispute the fact that cutting spending and continuing the massive shift of wealth distribution to the wealthy is the road to ruin.

Unfortunately, President Barack Obama in the typical politician’s lack of knowledge of economics does not know how far out of the mainstream are his economics advisers from the Chicago School of Economics.  That is why Obama and the Right Wing are competing for setting the goal of how far down the wrong road we should go.

According to the above video, Congressman Peter King is getting people of his own kind, as he might classify them, killed in Norway, but that isn’t going to stop him. We wonder how Al-Qaida and the Taliban can kill their own people and consider it to their political advantage. The right wing nutters seem to have picked up another stupid tactic from the people we supposedly oppose.

I got a kick out of the short piece in U.S. News & World Report by Brad Bannon, More Proof That the Republicans Aren’t Serious About Fiscal Discipline. Brad avoids any sugar coating with statements like the following:

Three weeks ago, GOP Speaker John Boehner walked away from the president’s proposal to reduce the deficit by more than $4 trillion. To be fair to the lame duck speaker, Boehner actually accepted the president’s compromise offer before he rejected it. But when the speaker ran back down Pennsylvania Avenue with his tail between his legs after his White House meeting, his boss Rep. Eric Cantor read him the Riot Act and the speaker backed down before the Tea Party caucus backed over him.

In the above video clip, Bill Maher expresses his disappointment. At about 3 minutes and 45 seconds into the clip he complains about how Obama negotiates and argues his points Never arguing the Democratic Agenda.

Compare Obama’s methods to those of Franklin D. Roosevelt as shown in my two previous posts An Adult Conversation and Franklin Roosevelt – Second Bill of Rights. FDR demonstrates for the current President and for us all how to figuratively stand up for one’s principles. It is amazing that a President with polio who could not actually stand without braces has to show a basketball playing President how to stand up.

On Truth Out the real title is Speaker Boehner’s Disgrace.

Here are a couple of paragraphs from the OpEd written by Robert Borosage, Campaign for America’s Future.

The President, Boehner said “can’t take ‘yes’ for an answer.” This risible comment from the leader of Republicans who have said no to the wrong-headed offer of $2.7 trillion in cuts in discretionary spending over 10 years (which will cut spending on education, the environment, food safety, affordable housing, cops on the beat and much more), plus a promise to set up a committee with extraordinary power to push cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in exchange for LOWERING top tax rates and closing loopholes.

Boehner rejects what can only be termed an abject and unacceptable surrender by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid because Republicans want only a six month extension of the debt limit, so they can play this game again prior to the 2012 election, and they oppose any consideration of increased tax revenues.

…

The most striking aspect of this “negotiation” is how far removed both sides are from the position of the vast majority of Americans. Poll after poll makes clear, Americans in overwhelming numbers want Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid protected from cuts. Most Americans support raising taxes on the rich, on the big corporations, ending big oil subsidies, lifting the cap on payroll taxes for Social Security, taxing big banks for the mess they created. Americans want jobs and growth.

We need to build an independent movement to represent this majority against the money politics and ideological blinders that are crippling Washington.

In the above video House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi explains what this fight is really about. Let me be clear about what she meant. The middle-class gets to share the sacrifice among its members. The ultra-wealthy class gets to share the wealth among its members. This is a guaranteed way to keep the unemployment levels high. The middle-class will be so worried about their jobs that they won’t have time to riot in the streets.

You notice that when Republicans claim that some economic policy has failed, they say it is President Obama’s stimulus plan that failed.

Well, the stimulus plan halted the precipitous drop in employment levels that never were supposed to happen with the Bush Tax Cuts for the wealthy. (At least Bush told us that these tax cuts would create jobs.). So if anything failed, it is the Bush Tax Cuts for the wealthy. Yet the Republicans want to get rid of what stopped the downward spiral of the lesser depression and keep what started the downward spiral of the lesser depression.

How do they manage to sell this to the American public? Well, they have their own Faux Noise channel and the astro-turf political organizations funded in secret by billionaires.

Even MSNBC, the supposed left leaning network, is so afraid of the power of the right wingers or so in cahoots with them that they have gotten rid of Keith Olbermann and Cenk Uygur because they tell the truth too much. In this country, even the left wing is to the right of center. No wonder this country is about to topple over.

As if you needed another retelling here is Obama’s 5 big mistakes on CNN.

Obama has lost his way so badly that even his core liberal supporters should be questioning whether they have got the right man in the job.

The indictment has five headings:

1. Obama has ceased to lead on the economy
2. Obama does not effectively use the domestic powers of the presidency.
3. Obama cannot communicate empathy for Americans in economic distress.
4. Obama over-relied on banks and bankers.
5. Obama is not a good negotiator