That compromise thing
So, after all of that talk about “working together” with Congress, I’m guessin’ that by “bi-partisan” the president means “My way or the highway”. It seems that cry-baby John Boehner presented the president with a compromise plan to avoid the “fiscal cliff” we about to go forward over. Boehner’s plan raised taxes on folks making over a million bucks, but that wasn’t good enough for “I Won” according to Fox News;
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, though, said it “doesn’t ask enough of the very wealthiest in taxes and instead shifts the burden to the middle class and seniors,” and cannot pass the Senate.
Within minutes, Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck fired back: “After spending months saying we must ask for more from millionaires and billionaires, how can they reject a plan that does exactly that?”
Buck accused President Obama of “moving the goal posts” and in the process “threatening every American family with higher taxes.”
Boehner, with no less than his leadership standing on the line, is trying to walk a tightrope in negotiations as the president demands tax hikes that many Republicans adamantly oppose.
And yet, it’s not class warfare, no, not a little bit. It’s not about pandering to a base of grubby little grabby cretins. If the administration is so worried about shifting “the burden to the middle class and seniors” why isn’t he doing everything he can to avoid the Obama Tax Hike that are pending in a few days? Who is going to be hit hardest when the Obama Tax Hike hits if not the lower income folks who are going to suddenly get hit with taxes for the first time?
Category: Taxes
Sparky, all that ‘free shit’ costs money. It comes from taxpayers who pay taxes to federal and state tax collectors.
If you want to know how much your share of taxes is, look at your tax return. There IS NO free shit, never has been, not even going back to the days of the Pharoahs. They had tax collectors, too.
@46- Hondo- Iraq was not simply bad intelligence (funny, how so many of you clutched your pearls when Rice “threw the intelligence community under the bus). It was either cherry-picked intelligence or outright lies. There was plenty of good intelligence out there, it just handily never made its way to Congress. I will actually agree with you that the South was more to blame for the war than the North (ex-ph2 would disagree with both of us, but you won’t go after him. Why is it incumbent upon me to castigate every liberal i disagree with, but you never have anything to say against your own?). However, the criteria you were using for ALL the other wars was who was President when the war started. You changed criteria for the civil war because that blows you “more deaths under Democrats” hypothesis to smithereens. It’s cherry picking. Lincoln, actually is my favorite President and I certainly don’t blame him for the war. Just as I don’t blame FDR for WWII. A war is good or bad depending on the circumstances surrounding it, not based on whether or not the President at the time has a D after his name. I will say that I was wrong to use the phrase “Republican wars” I should of said George Bush’s Iraq war. I forgot your genius in ignoring the main point and focusing on the minutia, my bad. My main point was that the poor do have “skin in the game”. That everyone should have the right to vote regardless of whether they own property because everyone is effected by policy. Your clearly ignoring my main point because, i think, you agree with it. So since you’d rather fight a liberal then one of your own, you ignored the main point and argued the minutia. The SCOTUS decision on the PPACA was completely consistent with common law, the Heller decision overturned law since Miller. The “off their meds” decision was for Heller. For the PPACA decision, if anything, i’d say he was “off his meds” in the places where he agreed with the… Read more »
@49 – Teddy- Either you’re getting me confused with another liberal (a not uncommon and even understandable occurrence considering there are so few on this board) or someone pilfered my name. I never had an extensive conversation with anyone regarding DADT on this board. In fact, most of the posts I’ve seen on this board regarding DADT is to state just what a complete asshole Lt. Dan Choi is. A position i agree with wholeheartedly.
“(S)ucking-up to Islamic terrorists or otherwise supporting known US enemies”. Does the phrase “Muslim Brotherhood” mean anything to you? Probably not, you are one of the denser ones to post anywhere. Libya? Syria?
Close Gitmo? How about an executive order? He’s down with those on a myriad of other things, if he wanted Gitmo closed, all he has to do is sign the order. He just doesn’t have the balls to do it, it might reflect badly in a poll somewhere.
@54- President Obama did sign an executive order closing Guantanamo his very first day in office. Congress has refused to fund the transfer:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28788175/ns/politics-white_house/t/obama-orders-cia-prisons-guantanamo-shut/
And why would they, dear boy? BTW–that was a DEMOCRAT-controlled Congress which refused to fund the move for the first two years.
Wouldn’t have anything to do with bringing them, uh, HERE, would it?
They would because Gitmo has been a rallying point for terrorists since it’s opened. I disagreed with Congress on that one. I have a far easier time pointing out when Democrats are wrong then most of you do.
But that’s all besides the point. The point Upnorth made was that President Obama didn’t have the “balls” to sign the order. Clearly he did.
Anything can be a rallying point for anyone. Anyone who has spent any amount of time in the Middle East knows that there is the truth, then there is what people believe. You wouldn’t believe the fantastic stories cooked up over there, even back in 2008 when I was studying at the University of Jordan.
The Arab public believes what they want, irrespective of facts. The terrorist population is no better.
Sparky, I’m curious about something. Maybe you can enlighten me.
What, if anything, is there in what I posted above that says I supported the South’s position in the War Between the States, or remotely implies that I’m a liberal, when neither is true of me or of what I said?
Or is this confusion on Sippy the Simpleminded’s part based on his confusion about who I am? 😉
I felt that I was being quite clear, certainly did not take or support one side or another, and used historical references instead of Wiki. Or is this apparent ‘confusion’ not actually ‘confusion’, but rather a stubborn refusal to acknowledge anyone else’s supporting references?
Could it be as simple as Sippy is a spoiled bitchy ghey boy and a sore loser?
First off, can you please point to where i used wiki as a referance anywhere? You did not take the South side directly but you echoed the Southern apologists talking points:
1. That the slaves were compensated for their labor by being given food and shelter.
2. That the Civil War had little to do with slavery.
3. That the war had more to do with crushing the Southern economy than slavery.
4. You took a single quote, out of historical context to try and paint a picture of Lincoln not caring about slavery, when he most assuredly did. You also failed to mention that while Lincoln supported the fugitive slave act, he was also against ANY expansion of slavery. That was what had the South was rebelling against.
@60 – In your opinion, what was the catalyst for the Civil War?
I kinda know what you’re going to say, but I’m curious anyway.
Well, the specific catalyst was the election of Abraham Lincoln. I’d say the biggest determinative event was John Brown at Harper’s Ferry. But obviously that’s a pretty broad question which whole books have been written about. However the effort to mitigate slavery as a cause is revisionist history at its most virulent.
Sippy: are you saying the posts from this thread using your screen name aren’t you?
http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=27209
I think this is the discussion that teddy996 was referencing.
Sippy: I’ll agree with you here on one point. IMO Ex-PH2’s confusing underlying war aims and war strategies in her argument above. From the Confederate perspective, the Civil War’s aim was indeed about preserving slavery; from the Union perspective, the war aim was preserving the Union. Only relatively late in the war did the Union side’s war aims expand to include ending slavery. But otherwise, you’re pretty much out to lunch – as always. Preserving slavery is precisely why the Confederate states, under Democratic leaders, seceded and started the Civil War in the first place. From their perspective, an “evil abolitionist Republican” had just been elected POTUS. They could not abide that, and decided to secede. However, slavery was not why the Union went to war. The Union’s war objective was to preserve the Union. The Northern grand strategy of preserving the Union resulted in the North adopting a grand strategy of first blockade, then later general economic destruction against the Confederacy. Destroy the Confederate economy, and the Confederate forces in the field can no longer be supported to fight – and the Confederate states in rebellion can then be occupied and later re-admitted into the Union. However, Lincoln’s primary concern was never abolishing slavery; that for him was a secondary concern, and only manifested relatively late in the war. Lincoln’s primary aim was always preserving the Union. See this quote: “I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be ‘the Union as it was.’ If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it,… Read more »
Many people make the erroneous leap that Lincoln’s opposition to slavery equated to a desire on his part to see enslaved blacks legally placed on equal footing with whites. Lincoln did not view equality among races as possible, for reasons that had nothing to do with politics or the predominant views of the day.
Hondo, the economics of the Civil War have less interest to most historians than the political aspects, however, there was an aspect to it that largely goes unnoticed, as per this article: ” In the seven states where most of the cotton was grown, almost one-half the population were slaves, and they accounted for 31 percent of white people’s income; for all 11 Confederate States, slaves represented 38 percent of the population and contributed 23 percent of whites’ income. Small wonder that Southerners — even those who did not own slaves — viewed any attempt by the federal government to limit the rights of slaveowners over their property as a potentially catastrophic threat to their entire economic system. By itself, the South’s economic investment in slavery could easily explain the willingness of Southerners to risk war when faced with what they viewed as a serious threat to their “peculiar institution” after the electoral victories of the Republican Party and President Abraham Lincoln the fall of 1860.” “An economic case for the North is more problematic. Most writers argue that the decision for war on Lincoln’s part was not based primarily on economic grounds. However, Gerald Gunderson points out that if, as many historians argue, Northern Republicans were intent on controlling the spread of slavery, then a war to keep the South in the Union might have made sense. Gunderson compares the “costs” of the war (which we discuss below) with the cost of “compensated” emancipation and notes that the two are roughly the same order of magnitude — 2.5 to 3.7 billion dollars (1974: 940-42). Thus, going to war made as much “economic sense” as buying out the slaveholders. Gunderson makes the further point, which has been echoed by other writers, that the only way that the North could ensure that their program to contain slavery could be “enforced” would be if the South were kept in the Union. Allowing the South to leave the Union would mean that the North could no longer control the expansion of slavery anywhere in the Western Hemisphere (Ransom 1989; Ransom and Sutch 2001;… Read more »
This reference is from “Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant”, copyright 1885 edition, which belonged to my great-grandfather:
“Up to the Mexican war there were a few out and out abolitionists, men who carried their hostility to slavery into all elections, from those for a Justice of the Peace up to the Presidency of the United States. They were noisy but not numerous. But the great majority of people at the North, where slavery did not exist, were opposed to the institution and looked upon its existence as unfortunate. They did not hold the States where slavery existed responsible for it; and believed that protection should be given to the right of property in slaves until some satisfactory way could be reached to be rid of the institution. Opposition to slavery was not a creed of either political party. In some sections more anti-slavery men belonged to the Democratic party, and in others to the Whigs. But with the inauguration of the Mexican War, in fact with the annexation of Texas, “the inevitable conflict” commenced.
“As the time for the Presidential election of 1856 — the first at which I had the opportunity of voting — approached, party feeling began to run high. The Republican party was regarded in the South and the border States not only as opposed to the extension of slavery, but as favoring the compulsory abolition of the institution without compensation to the owners. The most horrible visions seemed to present themselves to people who, one would suppose, ought to have known better. Many educated and, otherwise, sensible person appeared to believe that emancipation meant social equality.” — Chapter XVI
President Grant goes on to say that the election of a Republican President meant the inevitable secession of all the Slave States, and he preferred a candidate whose election would prevent or delay secession, and voted for Buchanan in the 1856 election.
Ex-PH2: we’ll have to agree to disagree here, Ex-PH2. I reject the thesis that destroying the South’s economy was the primary Union rationale for the Civil War, though in some areas essentially that resulted. Lincoln was fighting to preserve the Union – plain and simple. Fighting a war for the express purpose of destroying something you’re trying to keep doesn’t exactly make much sense.
In a protracted war – like the Civil War, World War I, or World War II – economic collapse of one of the belligerent parties often is a major factor in ending the conflict. That’s why both sides in World Wars I and II often practiced economic warfare – e.g., the German u-boat campaigns in both wars, the British (and later US) blockade in World War I, and the Allied strategic bombing campaigns in World War II. Some of these campaigns worked well; others didn’t.
Union efforts to degrade or destroy the Confederate economy during the Civil War fit into this pattern quite well. They were part of the overall Union grand strategy, not a war aim in and of themselves. The Union war aim supported by this strategy was the defeat of the Confederate armed forces, thus allowing reoccupation of the Confederate states and their eventual readmission into the Union.
OK, I’ll concede your point, but tell me which tactic is more effective in the long run, and I’m bringing it into the modern world in this: the economic embargo against Iran, or making all-out war on Iran?
One will produce results more quickly and also cause ecnomic destabilization and devastation. The other, which is basically a siege, costs less in materials and lives.
They both work, but which one is more effective?
I think the North did run an embargo, using the Navy to form a blockade of trading ships off Confederate shores.
That should be ‘economic’.
Embargos placed on other countries rarely work. Iran still manages to get materials for their nuclear ambitions. Hamas was still able to get rockets through to fire into Israel. Embargos work in conjunction with military operations like in the Civil war. Blockades make smugglers rich for getting the goods into the country. There’s no shortage of people ready to take to risk.
Ex-PH2: both have their place. Economic efforts alone don’t work very well. Fighting a military war without engaging economic targets works best against third-world nations without a significant industrial infrastructure. Against an enemy having both, engaging both is the best way to ensure the shortest possible war. And even then, a determined enemy may stretch things out for years.