Cartoon of the day 2011-07-18

The McConnell Plan

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., offered a new plan to allow the president to demand up to $2.4 trillion in new borrowing authority by the summer of next year in three separate submissions.

via McConnell: Give Obama New Powers on Debt Limit.

You can find the details here.

Basically it

allows the president to demand up to $2.4 trillion in new borrowing authority by the summer of next year in three separate submissions.

House and Senate could disallow these requests in 15 days and the president could veto any “disallowals.”

The Heritage Foundation argues against it. The Wall Street Journal seems to like it. Zogby says voters will blame the president.

Republicans had already been called out by The Economist:

IN THREE weeks, if there is no political deal, the American government will go into default. Not, one must pray, on its sovereign debt. But the country will have to stop paying someone: perhaps pensioners, or government suppliers, or soldiers. That would be damaging enough at a time of economic fragility. And the longer such a default went on, the greater the risk of provoking a genuine bond crisis would become.

The Journal op/ed sees what’s happening:

Mr. Obama is trying to present Republicans with a Hobson’s choice: Either repudiate their campaign pledge by raising taxes, or take the blame for any economic turmoil and government shutdown as the U.S. nears a debt default. In the former case Mr. Obama takes the tax issue off the table and demoralizes the tea party for 2012, and in the latter he makes Republicans share the blame for 9.2% unemployment.

The McConnell Plan avoids both of these.

It may work…

Political Cartoon of the day 2011-07-11

Not so sure how true this is now…

Amplify’d from theweek.com

See more at theweek.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a17kt3

Political Cartoon of the day 2011-07-09

Amplify’d from theweek.com

See more at theweek.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a17bqa

Barack Obama = George III?

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel did a great service by printing the Declaration of Independence in Sunday’s Crossroads (Too bad they didn’t put it on the web site, but you can read it here.).

That got me to thinking about today. You hear bits and pieces, here and there about how we may need armed insurrection to save this country from the socialists/Marxists/Fascists. Because you know, the declaration makes that statement at the beginning:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. [Emphasis mine]

Justification for armed insurrection, no?

I think not.

Why?

First, look at what Jefferson wrote. He says two things that I think are different from the present day. One, “Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes” and two, “a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism.”

This implies serious stuff and long time line, something we have not yet reached here (and frankly doubt we will reach).

Many of my conservative friends will differ, which is, of course, their perrogative.

But as I compare today with 1776, I see no comparison even though some do.

So I can’t belong to the Tea Party?

So insists John Amato and David Neiwert in their book, “Over the Cliff: How Obama’s Election Drove the American Right Insane” according to Steve Levingston at Political Bookworm

They believe there are 10 fictitious Tea Party beliefs:

1. The birth-certificate conspiracy.

2. Death panels.

3. Obama is a Muslim/Socialist/Fascist.

4. Obama is going to take away our guns.

5. Obama is raising our taxes.

6. Fascism is a left-wing phenomenon.

7. Global warming is a hoax.

8. Some 16,000 new IRS agents will enforce the new health care reform act by throwing you in jail.

9. Two million people were at the 9/12 March on Washington.

10. The Tea Parties are a non-partisan, broad grassroots movement.

Well, I don’t believe them all, so….