Bush-lite

[Papa Wheelie]

The only Republican candidates I could support would be Huntsman and Paul. Won't support Obama.

I'm close to joining Carlin with voting.    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjbUnvFvgyg&feature=fvst

People stay home because the way districts have been gerrymandered by BOTH PARTIES  means if your party isn't in power your vote is irrelevant. 

Obama has done a terrible job. He doesn't deserve a second term.

Albeit the Republican front runners don't deserve a first term.

[KNAPPer]

Kristof isn't far from the perspective I hold on these last several years. I wish we had other options because though I am not happy with Obama, I also think he was delt a pretty bad deck of cards to play by Bush, the banks and their horrible mismanagement, wars and the Congress and crazy right wing politics he had to work with. Obama has been a pretty bad communicator and has passed over hundreds of opportunities to deliver some plain speech to America over the way things should be here. I believe he could have changed the tide with some tough speech, but he seems unwilling to point out the folly of the right while at the same time is willing to let them ring their bell loud for all to hear. He has also bent too far, too often and I am not sure whether he expected cooperation in return or whether he is benefiting from special interest support. It's complicated.

As for GOP choices, I would like to see Huntsman come out in front, but that's not what the crowd hanging outside the Frankenstein castle wants as they waive their scythes and pitchforks. We have seen pretty much every GOP hopeful, possibly barring Paul, swing and change with the flow of the crowd, adjusting their rhetoric to match what is deemed a proper republican perspective. Who know what will happen if one of these candidates is elected. There is no way they can match their own rhetoric in office. No president will or can do what they want unless they are willing to totally alienate almost every American who is not wealthy enough to not have to give a hoot anyway. I hate to say it, but I am almost willing to enable them to shoot off their ultra right bottle rocket, let it pop and then get back to some sort of politics that is sustainable.

[bruce MN]

Smart enought, I beleive he is, to know that we are sitting ono a powder keg. And to know what will igninte it quicker than anything and those things are what he has been eithier by choice or by very strong advice against doing.

I agree in principle with this that you say:

"I believe he could have changed the tide with some tough speech, but he seems unwilling to point out the folly of the right while at the same time is willing to let them ring their bell loud for all to hear."

And have said often here and in the day to day that maybe , just once he would call a presser or ask for air time on the basis of an impending crisis and look the American people in the eye and tell us what he found out when he asked that soembody count the beans.

But if he had or if he were too he'd ignite the instinctive fear that millons have ingrained in them of "the angry Black man" and amplify the existing false accustaions of him being a socialist.

That is unavoaidable and he knows it better than anybody. I think his calculations may be to let the GOP commit suicide by letting the most basal elements within it run things. They show no indication that anybody is going to do anything to stop that from happening.

And just one man's opinoin, but Hillary would have been worse. She'd have had an economic advisory team that would have been like Summers and Geithner on steroids. Her POS, opportunist husband never had a populist cell in his body and it was undoubtedly going to be his peeps who she was going to employ. It was they who ran her campaign.

[bruce MN]

E. J. says the most important thing to do is  to keep from splitting the natural oppostion to the extreme right:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/divided-moderates-will-be-conquered/2011/11/25/gIQAhEsm2N_sto...

The deficit that should most worry us is a deficit of reasonableness. The problems the United States confronts are large but not insoluble. Yet sensible solutions that are broadly popular can’t be enacted.

Why? Because an ideological bloc that sees every crisis as an opportunity to reduce the size of government holds enough power in Congress to stop us from doing what needs to be done.

Some of my middle-of-the-road columnist friends keep ascribing our difficulties to structural problems in our politics. A few call for a centrist third party. But the problem we face isn’t about structures or the party system. It’s about ideology — specifically a right-wing ideology that has temporarily taken over the Republican Party and needs to be defeated before we can have a reasonable debate between moderate conservatives and moderate progressives about our country’s future.

A centrist third party would divide the opposition to the right wing and ease its triumph. That’s the last thing authentic moderates should want.

Let’s look at the record, starting with the congressional supercommittee’s failure to reach agreement on a plan to reduce the fiscal deficit. It’s absurd to pretend that we can shrink the deficit over the long term without substantial tax increases.

No matter how hard policymakers try to trim spending on Medicare, its costs will go up for many years simply because so many baby boomers will be retiring between now and 2029. Moreover, employers will keep cutting back on coverage for their workers as long as the price of insurance continues to go up.

However we manage it, in other words, government will be required to pay an ever larger share of our nation’s health-care bills. That means the government’s share of the economy is destined to rise — unless we decide to leave a large part of our population with little or no protection against illness.

The least we can do under those circumstances is to repeal the tax cuts for the wealthy enacted under President George W. Bush. Yet the only revenue conservatives on the supercommittee put on the table involved $300 billion, most of it from ill-defined tax reforms, in exchange for lower tax rates on the rich and making something like $3.7 trillion worth of tax cuts permanent.

Progressives have already made clear that they are willing not only to increase revenue but also to cut Medicare costs. The Obama health-care law did both, and it was attacked by Republicans for doing so. Democrats on the supercommittee offered substantial entitlement cuts. But they rightly refused a deal that would squander years of future revenue in the name of keeping taxes low on the wealthiest Americans.

What might a reasonable budget argument look like? Progressives would propose fewer spending cuts in exchange for tax increases that would fall mainly on the wealthy: higher rates on top incomes, capital gains and estates, along with a financial transactions tax. Conservatives would counter with larger spending cuts coupled with taxes on consumption rather than on investment. Out of such a debate might come a sensible deal, based on a shared acknowledgment that long-term balance requires both thrift and new revenue.

In the meantime, a broad range of economists agree that America’s sputtering jobs machine needs a sharp and quick jolt. It is unconscionable that in the face of mass unemployment, Republicans continue to foil measures to spur employment, including an extension of the payroll tax holiday. How can conservatives declare simultaneously that (1) it would be a terrible crime to raise taxes on the rich in the long term, and (2) it is an act of virtue to raise taxes on the middle class immediately? Has class warfare ever been so naked?

Then there is immigration. Common sense says there is no way the United States can or should deport some 11 million illegal immigrants. But when Newt Gingrich spoke of this reality — and suggested that conservatives ought to worry about how deportations would break up families — he was said to have committed a gaffe that will end his ride as the Republican front-runner. In today’s GOP, it’s becoming dangerous to be sensible.

We need moderation all right, but a moderate third party is the one way to guarantee we won’t get it. If moderates really want to move the conversation to the center, they should devote their energies to confronting those who are blocking the way. And at this moment, the obstruction is coming from a radicalized right.

[Nebrfarmr]

Can an independant read it LOL?

I agree, the Obama administration did do better at some things than his detractors give him credit, but if you drive by the rear view mirror, you are destined to go off the road.  The question we need answered, what is the best course of action, from here.

In my opinion, we need to

1) cut wasteful spending, and fraud

2) close loopholes and sweetheart deals in the tax code

3) Help the needy, and try to restructure it as a hand up, rather than a hand out.  Money spent to make someone a productive member of society is better spent, than just giving them a check. 

4) see what results from that, and continue forward. 
I know it isn't all-encompassing, but we need to jump one hurdle at a time.  If we try to clear them all at once, we are going to trip.

(I was going to mention cutting corporate welfare, as well as special perks to the wealthy, but I think they fall under the general descriptions of 1 & 2

[r3020]

If Obama wants to win he only has to do one thing.......submit to congress a balanced budget that is more spending cut than tax increases.

[Nebrfarmr]

I would agree with that.

[schnurrbart]

Repubs will always nix any tax increases because most of them are afraid to lose their job and norquist will see to it that they do if they vote for any increase.

[GreaTOne_65]

Do either one of you realise he's the BOSS? They are the ones that are to do HIS biding not the other way around! Apparently, neither of you have worked for someone else.

[schnurrbart]

How long will it take for someone to call you a racist since you said "an angry Black man"???