Via the Benenator 2000 over at the Maddow Blog, I see that Obama is tired of dealing with deceitful Republicans:
Acting White House Budget Director Jeff Zients wrote to the heads of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees on Wednesday to lay down the threat.
“Until the House of Representatives indicates that it will abide by last summer’s agreement, the President will not be able to sign any appropriations bills,” the letter states.
Basically, the teahadist faction in the right wants to make more cuts to domestic spending beyond what was already agreed upon, while at the same time spending MORE on defense than was agreed upon:
But fast forward to this spring when, as we’ve noted in previous stories, House Republicans pledged to cut more out of discretionary spending programs in the next fiscal year than they agreed to last summer. Facing a rebellion from House conservatives, budget committee chairman Paul Ryan and party leaders cut deeper, setting a ceiling for discretionary spending that’s $19 billion below the cap in the debt limit deal, and cuts domestic spending even further to finance greater-than-agreed-to funding for the Defense Department.
For now, at least, the White House is holding strong.
cathyx
And by ‘for now’ you mean April 19, 2012.
Clime Acts
giggle
Mike in NC
Stand by for the Village outrage about his “failure to reach across the aisle”.
El Tiburon
Fuck giggle – how about laugh out loud funny.
Seems they more these people draw a line in the sand, the more they cave in the end.
See: public option, Keystone Pipeline, Grand Bargain and so forth and also too and I ain’t fallin for no banana in the tailpipe and Lucy and Charlie Brown.
Professor
@El Tiburon: Don’t you get tired playing this broken record? You could have helped get your pony by asking your congressperson and senator to insist on the Public Option! It is annoying to constantly harp on this CRAP!
Punchy
@El Tiburon: they caved on the Keystone project? Did I miss this?
NR
@Professor: The reason we didn’t get the public option is because Obama cut a secret backroom deal with the hospitals and the insurance companies to kill it, as was documented in the NYT. No amount of “asking your congressperson and senator to insist on” it would have helped.
ruemara
Cue the gaggle of fucktards. Public Option: never on the table. The vote Harry Reid scheduled on it, the WH asked him if he was sure he had the votes, he said it did and it failed. I can’t stand you people. Such convenient memories and fallacies.
@Punchy: He authorized the lower portion to built in an area that needed a new pipe anyway. complete cave.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Professor: There are “progressives” out there who want Obama to “cave”, to give themselves something to whine about.
NR
@ruemara: Once again: Obama’s secret backroom deal to kill the public option was documented in the NYT, just like his secret backroom deal with Big Pharma to kill drug reimportation. You can ignore it all you like, but it doesn’t change facts.
13th Generation
This one’s gonna’ be a barnburner!
Mnemosyne
@El Tiburon:
What was the Grand Bargain cave and what actual action occurred because of it? Be specific. Saying, “Well, if the Republicans had accepted the deal, it would have been really bad” doesn’t count. Contrary to what you seem to think, “hypothetical” and “reality” are not actually synonyms.
quannlace
Ryan: The President is threatening Congress. Outrage! How can we cut kid’s food stamps if we don’t renege on our promise?
Boehner: *Sob* He’s being mean to us!
Mnemosyne
@NR:
And your link is ….
Though I do love how the NYT, cheerleaders for the Iraq War and inventors of Whitewater, are now totally trustworthy in the left’s eyes as long as they bash Obama.
Was it the NYT who told you that Clinton vetoed his own health care bill?
RalfW
So why on pasta’s green earth are you people having the same damn sad over the public option today?
It’s pathetic.
The GOP is waging all out war on women, people of color, the poor, and immigrants, and you’re nursing a wound from a couple years ago rather than saying “fvck yeah, hold strong, kick the GOP in the teeth!!”
No frunkin’ wonder the GOP wins most of these battles. Sheesh.
El Tiburon
@ruemara:
Seriously. Some of you people have your heads so far up your a-holes it is incredible. You will literally believe anything. And that which you won’t believe, you will pretend it simply never existed.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Cripes JC @ top, haven’t you learned by now that putting up anything positive about Obama is just begging the haterade crowd to set up camp in the living room and start plundering the fridge? This is like advertising free beer and brats at my house during Octoberfest: the wurst mistake you can make.
Mnemosyne
@RalfW:
Yep. They’d rather pick at the scab of something that everyone else moved on from two years ago than have to do the actual work of opposing and defeating the Republicans.
13th Generation
20 bucks to the first person who invokes he and she that shall not be named!
Mnemosyne
@El Tiburon:
You know, you could probably do better at passing yourself off as a leftist if you didn’t insist on using the Club for Growth’s talking points.
El Tiburon
@Mnemosyne:
I’ll be very specific: Obama has done more Mitt-flippity-flops from his campaign than can be counted. And no, I don’t give a fuck if this is the way it and I need to grow up and be pragmatic and a realist.
I’ll be very specific: he continues to kill innocent children for no fucking reason.
I will continue my specificity: he continues to embrace the same conservative economic policies and neocon foreign policy that got us here in the first place.
He based his entire political career on opposing these issues and you know it.
What will it take for you to admit he has been a major disappointment in just about every single area of US politics? Seriously, what can he do?
And no, I am not for Ron Paul. And yes, I will vote for Obama because the alternative is so much worse. But it doesn’t change the fact that if this was George W. Bush doing half of what Obama is doing you’d all be pitching a fit.
4tehlulz
inb4 whitey tape
Mnemosyne
@El Tiburon:
Again — name them. Whining about how he’s, like, totally disappointing without having actual incidents to back you up only reveals you as the whiner that you are.
Specifically, which “killing of innocent children” are you complaining about? Afghanistan? Syria? Libya?
I know you love to spout out non-specific complaints because then no one can point out that they are, in fact, bullshit, but not this time. You need to provide specific information and links or you need to STFU with your whiny “well, everyone knows what a failure Obama is.”
Put up or shut up. Evidence and specific incidents. Please note that your Holy Grail of the public option has already been invoked, so you’ll have to come up with something else.
4tehlulz
“I will vote for Obama because the alternative is so much worse.”
CAVE
Frankensteinbeck
@El Tiburon:
We’re out or Iraq as promised, he stepped up and then set a timetable for leaving Afghanistan as promised, Libya was the very limited engagement asked for by the international community he promised. So no, not neocon foreign policy. Moderate liberal foreign policy, limitedly interventionist and supportive of the UN. Oh, and he’s told Israel’s government to fuck off in its warmongering repeatedly, and damn do they hate him for it.
Economically he’s heavily increased regulation on the medical and financial industries, created tons of incentives for renewable energy, made it easier for college students to get loans and grants while removing corporate profit taking from the system. He’s done a small amount of extra investing in infrastructure and pushed for a lot more, but given the obstructionism he’s faced I’ll be astonished if you can tell me with a straight face he could get it. Faced with repeated demands by the right wing for heavy safety net cuts while they eagerly held the economy hostage, he refused to grant those cuts and fed them crap accounting tricks instead.
The facts speak for themselves. The man is a moderate liberal, and extremely good at it under very difficult circumstances.
Mnemosyne
@El Tiburon:
Well, first he’d have to do something that I would call a major disappointment. I realize that you are still pissed off that millions of Americans now have health insurance who didn’t have it two years ago, but not too many people think that health insurance is a bad thing like you do.
I realize you’re pissed off that Bin Laden, al-Awlaki, and Gaddafi are dead, but not too many people agree with you.
I realize you think that Obama should have shut down Congress and started running the government as a dictator rather than trying to get the Republicans to do their damn jobs, but not too many people agree with you.
ETA: Also, too, I love how the largest stimulus package since the Great Depression is just “continuing conservative economic policies.” Because Herbert Hoover totally would have done the same thing!
Forum Transmitted Disease
Three of the first four posts I read are from Republican ratfuckers/firebaggers.
Romney will give you so much more of what you want, I guarantee it.
Wonder why this site gets so much of their attention?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@4tehlulz:
__
This is why Obama is so insidious. Being forced to vote for him, whether you like it or not, is like being forced to drink fluoridated water, without so much as a do you mind?. It poisons the purity of our precious mental fluidities.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@NR: As was Saddam’s WMD. Slam dunk, fucker.
13th Generation
@Forum Transmitted Disease: You almost had it with firebagger, why don’t you give it one more try?
Lolis
I love how this post turned into firebagger bait.
13th Generation
@Lolis: Or Obot bait, depends on how rosie your glasses are I guess.
4tehlulz
MEANWHILE:
McCain Tweets: ‘Sorry Mr. President,’ My Son’s Dog ‘Not On The Menu’
Frankensteinbeck
@Mnemosyne:
I’m baffled by their blindness to the existence of two thousand pages of new regulations and regulatory structures in the ACA that have already made a huge dent in our problem of spiraling health care costs. Yes, the insurance industries TOTALLY want those, and they’d sure have been part of any Republican proposal. Just like Wall Street LOVES that FinReg has dropped bonuses by about three quarters because the new regulations there butchered the ability of banks to game the stock market.
JenJen
Not only is the White House holding strong, they’re also boxing in Romney very early in the national campaign. I imagine the Romney campaign would’ve preferred to have Mitt take a position on budgets and promises in September when they could soften it up, not in April where he’s probably going to have to be a hardliner to prove his street cred to the teabagging base.
BDeevDad
@4tehlulz: Resisting urge to tweet back,
General Stuck
Typical day for the American Firebagger
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@4tehlulz:
__
This sort of desperate spin is a tell re: where the GOP feels most anxious and insecure going into the general election. GOP pros are probably pretty freaked out right now about the GOP’s War On Women and Romney’s dog problem. Hence their frantic attempts to gin up some any sort of story that paints Obama in a bad light with regard to either women or pet lovers.
4tehlulz
@BDeevDad: Only for FIVE AND A HALF YEARS ALAN
gene108
@RalfW:
The don’t win most of the battles. In the long-war of social change the reactionaries lose.
If they were winning DADT would’ve been repealed and replaced by its predecessor that 100% barred gays from serving in the military and not with a repeal that allows gays 100% serve in the military, no questions asked.
Civil rights, women’s rights, and even the banning of smoking in restaurants aren’t things the modern Republican party is really O.K. with but has either lost or is losing the battle on.
Economic issues are more complicated because of the massive changes in the global economy over the past 20 years to figure out, but in general conservatives tend to lose on social issues.
They just make enough noise that you think they’re winning. It’s a neat mind game they play.
Corner Stone
@13th Generation: Greenwaldian Hamsheritus!
Now pay up biznatchie! I got Colombian hookers to pay!
Forum Transmitted Disease
@4tehlulz: McCain, always a class act. I’ll bet his last words on this earth will be to call someone a cunt.
Frankensteinbeck
@gene108:
I believe it’s because they’re very short term focused. These last four years have been a great example. They’ve pulled out every stop to make Obama look bad, they exploited the predictable backlash midterms to pass the most regressive state level crap they could, but in the process they’ve alienated absolutely every minority and gotten themselves stuck with 2012 presidential candidates who made Romney look competent. Romney.
They look like they’re winning because they accomplish a lot of loud, flashy short-term stuff, but in the long term they get hammered. Their best run yet was Reagan selling conservative economic policies to the working class, but polls show that’s run its course and raising taxes on the rich is popular again at last.
Omnes Omnibus
@Forum Transmitted Disease: One wonders what he ate as a POW.
Maude
@Omnes Omnibus:
heh
Brachiator
@NR:
Fact is, you’re making shit up.
@El Tiburon:
Every one of your specifics is a misstatement of facts or an exaggeration.
But this gets to the heart of things:
Clearly, Obama has disappointed you. That you and others feel this way is problematic for Obama and for the Democratic Party, especially going into the general election. You’d think that people, especially in this forum, would have a better understanding of the ferocious GOP oppostion and the inconstancy of the Democrats in Congress.
And no, I don’t think Obama is perfect. Far from it.
But the lack of perspective, the insistence on supposed disappointment. Heck, it’s almost like a Romney campaign ad.
Suffern ACE
@Mnemosyne: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/27/the_obama_doctrine
There. That should keep you and el Tiburn busy for awhile. Are drone strikes superior to boots on the ground? They are cheaper. They probably produce fewer casualties, so there are merits to discuss. But let’s not pretend that we’ve somehow restored a liberal peaceful rule over the earth and the drone strikes don’t go astray. I’m sure Assad is sad when his bullets miss the protestors they are intended for, but that doesn’t make the Syrain government less monsterous. Do drone strikes make somehow make ours more benign?
Bringing the CIA back in might be a pretty big mistake. Sure progressives loved them when their analysts were being ignored in the run up to the war, but maybe it’s not good to love them too much.
Tonybrown74
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Well, if his wife is in the hospital room …
General Stuck
@Suffern ACE:
First sentence on your link, and it’s total BS.
It is certainly okay to oppose drone attacks, or any of the other ways Obama has increased action on the GWOT, but Obama was crystal clear during the campaign of 08, that he would not only carry on the war on terrorism, but would actually try to win that so called war. And would escalate the ground and other actions in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And that he did. I’ve had problems with the drone campaign, as to killing way too many civilians, as well as wanting us to end the ground war there ASAP, but Obama is, and has bee doing precisely what he campaigned on.
Ash Can
The GOP is cruising for a government shutdown in September. As in, just two months before the election. Awesome.
Mnemosyne
@Suffern ACE:
I don’t mind debating actual policy. I understand the appeal of drones to the CIA and the military, but I do think that in most cases, they do more harm than good. IMO, at this point Afghanistan is FUBARed beyond repair and our only realistic option is to GTFO. From what that article reports, it sounds like the CIA needs to be reined in again, because they always seem to become convinced that they’re totally good at covert ops when history shows over and over again that they actually suck at covert ops.
I did find it interesting that, as skeptical as that article is, the author was unable to completely condemn drone attacks based on his personal experience:
Gex
@BDeevDad: Why resist?
Ronzoni Rigatoni
@Ash Can: Well, if they shut the gummint down and I don’t get my SS check or my gummint pension, I gonna shoot every goddam dawg in the neighborhood and roast ’em onna spit in the front yard. Living in Florida, by itself, makes me feel threatened these dayz.
Frankensteinbeck
@Suffern ACE:
No, we’re restored liberal limited interventionist rule over the Earth (or at least America and its military). Isolation and pacifism are not mainstream liberal positions. I’m not sure they ever have been – previous isolationist movements have been conservative, and carved out a gigantic exception for Central and South America. If you want a president who will end all military involvement in the rest of the world, you’re not getting one and you’re not speaking for liberals in general.
NR
@RalfW:
Because when people get lied to and screwed over, some see that as a big deal. You may not care about it, but other people certainly do.
NR
@Brachiator:
Fact is, you’re a slavish, unthinking follower who doesn’t want to face reality. And that’s not my problem. The facts are the facts, no matter how much you try to deny them.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Gosh, I can’t imagine why the
lobbyistSenior Policy Advisor for Alston & Bird would want to make it look like Obama totally caved to his clients thanks to Daschle’s awesome lobbying powers.We seriously dodged a bullet when Daschle had to withdraw his nomination for HHS.
tone
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Yeah, his wife most likely.
Brachiator
@NR:
Yawn. The link you provided is much more nuanced than your spurious claim about nefarious, secret back room deals.
Ironically, the title of Daschle’s book is “Getting it Done: How Obama and Congress Broke the Stalemate to Make Way for a New Healthcare System.”
And you want to use this as “proof” that the public option was doable, and that bad ol’ Bama sold you out. And as others have noted here, Daschle’s account has its own bias.
But I am far more tough minded than you. I have said time and again that if you want to push Obama more to the left, you have to get more progressives elected. Because the cold, hard fact is that you are not even going to get shit on a shingle from the Republicans.
S Clayton U
@Omnes Omnibus:
McCain: “I spent the next 3 years in a POW camp, forced to subsist on a thin stew made of fish, vegetables, prawns, coconut milk and four kinds of rice. I came close to madness trying to find it here in the States but they just can’t get the spices right.”
Corner Stone
@Frankensteinbeck: You keep using the word “liberal”.
Either that word no longer means what it’s commonly accepted to, or you’ve introduced a new category.
Because the concepts and outcomes you consider “liberal” aren’t really all that close.
But you keep repeating it. So that’s cool.
TenguPhule
Well, he hasn’t busted a cap in Newt And Proudly flourished the bloody corpse on the steps of Capital Hill, so there’s that.
TenguPhule
And yet you still de facto work for Republicans.
Up against the wall when the Revolution comes.
Clime Acts
@Frankensteinbeck:
OMFG…gigle big time.
xian
@RalfW: well, these rats won’t fuck themselves
sydney
@El Tiburon:
You cannot argue with the obtuse.
Just clap louder, louder,LOUDER.
NR
@TenguPhule:
By voting for Democrats, you work for Republicans, because Democrats implement their policies.
NR
@Brachiator:
Yeah, the problem is, when those “progressives” belong to the Democratic party, they will go along with what Obama wants, even when he’s pushing right-wing legislation.
The Democratic party will not move us away from the right-wing domination of American politics. It will take a new party to do that.
NR
@Mnemosyne: Right, I forgot. Obama is the perfect progressive president who wants to do the progressive thing all the time, but unfortunately he just has no choice but to implement right-wing policy. Anyone who says anything different is just a dirty, dirty liar.
God is good, therefore this is the best of all possible worlds, therefore any evil that happens is both absolutely necessary and the least that it could possibly be. Replace “God” with “Obama” and you guys might as well get that tattooed on your backs.
Suffern ACE
@NR: Good luck. Your movement has been destroyed. You have been conned by your progressive leaders. Your third party that was at least being built is a mess. Your leaders couldn’t figure out how to find a primary candidate to field in new Hampshire. You keep running up a standard bearer who doesn’t want to build a party. You peaked in 2000 and there is no strength behind you politically. You couldn’t get enough voters to the polls at this point to vote for anyone even if your candidate were running unopposed. Go change yourselves. What your team has been doing has not worked. Your message is probably fine. Your messenger suck eggs.
Boo fucking hoo.
mclaren
Bullshit. The instant Obama gets re-elected, he’ll sign off on massive increases in U.S. military spending and brutal cuts in domestic safety net programs.
Then Obama will hold a press conference and congratulate everyone for “rising above partisanship for the good of America.”
Suffern ACE
@mclaren: Yeah. The evidence for that is overwhelming. Why don’t write a page or two for us on that.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@mclaren: And you called me “The prophet Nostradumbass”?
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Since you’ve waved your hand and magically turned universal health insurance, the largest economic stimulus since the Great Depression, the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and free birth control into “right-wing policy,” I guess you can never be wrong because any policy Obama comes up with will be “right wing” to you.
Any other liberal policies you want to magically transform into “right-wing” policies so you can whine about how awful Obama is? The withdrawal from Iraq? The re-regulation of the financial industry? I hear Obama totally got his alternative energy policy from the Heritage Foundation.
Mnemosyne
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Hey, mclaren has a perfect record around here. She’s never been right yet. It’s like having our own little Bill Kristol.
TenguPhule
Yeah, its called the “Liberal Stormtrooper” Party.
They round up idiots like you and put you out of our misery.
sydney
@Suffern ACE:
Your an asshole, and a apologist.
Pull your head out of the sand, and just stick it up your ass.
Smell the flowers now.