Let's dive right in!
AHLBLOGGER (A): So, I thought we might have more success if we discuss a specific topic rather than the vague concept of a Republican presidential run in 2012. As the left leaning liberal independent who generally supports Obama (though I am losing that religion fairly quickly this year) I have to say that this debt ceiling/budget negotiation is nothing but empty, pointless, kabuki theater in the name of political posturing. Isn't that about how you see it as well?
HAMSTER RUNNING ON THE SERVER WHEEL (HRSW): Absolutely not! As a matter of fact I am not even sure why you (and every other liberal) keep insisting on using the "kabuki theater" line as I seriously do not see what this important historical moment has anything to do with Japanese historical plays.
This is kabuki theater:
What's happening in Washington is that good, honest, fiscally conservative Republicans are attempting to save America from a liberal, socialist, apathetic tyrant and his union cronies. The spending and taxation in this country are beyond the pale and the Democrats have to be stopped before they spend the U.S. into third world oblivion.
A: I think the Kabuki metaphor is apt as it is essentially historical morality drama that frequently end with suicide and include obvious stage elements such as; melodrama, exaggerated costumes and lots of and lots of white make-up. I think largely this idea stems from the notion that a lot of the Republican arguments in this so-called, "historical moment" is built on artifice. The artificial and politically convenient connection of the debt ceiling and the budget. The apparent willingness to walk the entire nation toward the possibility of default in the name of ideology and essentially a stubborn point of view.
Not to mention the whole deficit fetish as a whole, as ascribed by the coven of Pete Peterson, that even Obama himself seems to have fallen victim to what with all his talk of managing the nation's budget just like a family manages theirs. So we all have to, "tighten our belts" and make sacrifices particularly if you are not part of the military-industrial complex or extremely wealthy. It's absurd, false, and simple minded to assume that this can be done WITHOUT raising taxes. Cutting undefined spending alone cannot possibly fix this especially while we remain in this stalled economy while the rich somehow magically continue with their record profits. All the while unable to gain the confidence to start creating all those jobs under those Bush tax cuts we have retained for years.
HRSW: Wow, look at you the lucky liberal economy expert! That's amazing to me how all you lefty loonies always manage to become economic experts conveniently at the same time the liberal media does! Being an actual economic/political science/historian it truly is laughable to listen to all your fabrications and excuses. Look, the fact is that Obama has spent more in his short time as your president than any other president in history. He is conducting an illegal war on our dime, a stimulus package on our dime, illegally passed a socialist health care bill that will do nothing BUT raise costs for Americans AND simultaneously drive even more corporations and jobs over seas.
And I am certain that he will not rest until he raises taxes, cancels the Bush tax cuts thus squashing any potential for job growth in the private sector, and then he's going to start rolling out his gun control laws. I think that is why he created this whole made up deadline of August 2nd so he can get the money troubles off his desk so he can better focus on his 2012 election theft and then FINALLY complete fulfilling his master plan of turning our beloved country into a 3rd world, socialist, shit pit.
A: Leaving out your conspiracy theories related to the 2012 election and beyond I can't help but wonder how it is you keep laboring under this idea that Obama and the Democrats have concocted this whole debate when it is seems as clear as day that it's the Republicans who are being ideological, stubborn and apparently completely unwilling to compromise even in the slightest. Obama keeps publicly saying that he is willing to take the heat from his party and his base to try and meet the Republicans in the middle and those conservative fuckers won't budge an inch. Especially sickening as Obama is right about the "heat" part; as a supposed member of his "base" all I see is a bunch of bending over backwards to give in to the bratty ideologues and their ridiculous deficit fetishism at every turn while getting nothing in return.
Obama is so amazingly centrist that he practically IS a Republican, if not the bluest Blue Dog Democrat ever, and yet the "opposition" continue to cling to these socialist diatribes based entirely on their own imagined bullshit while continuing to labor under the notion that somehow Obama is the worst president in history. It seems that Republican politics have long ago lost the politics they stood for and have become entirely engulfed in their own wild-eyed fringes. Look, when even The Economist comes out and says,
It is because the vast majority of Republicans, driven on by the wilder-eyed members of their party and the cacophony of conservative media, are clinging to the position that not a single cent of deficit reduction must come from a higher tax take. This is economically illiterate and disgracefully cynical.You KNOW there is something wrong in the Republican stew and it is my guess that something can be called "The Tea Party." That and the same old, same old, when it comes to Republicans...Or as Henry Blodget, of The Business Insider, points out,
This behavior is an abdication of the Republicans' responsibilities as elected officials. It puts the Republicans' self-interest ahead of the country's.So, they can win. Not because that is what Americans want or need...Fuck those people! It's so they can win elections and keep the wealth flowing to #1...Not you.
HRSW: You are such a typical, cynical liberal who thinks we are just greedy, soul less monsters who are out to put Grandma on the street so we can make another buck. WRONG! We love what we believe this country truly is and if the government were just the small, powerless organization it was supposed to be, as designed by our founding fathers, then we would all be free to take care of ourselves. Grandma wouldn't need to be suckling on our collective taxpaying teats to survive because she would have pulled her self up by her bootstraps and taken care of herself. Or better yet, her God fearing, true blood American, family would have helped do it with her with, at most, a little help from her church. Instead we leave her to the state to fund with OUR tax dollars along side a billion other unneeded and unwanted government waste projects created to further regulate our freedoms away.
Which is why we have The Tea Party in the first place because SOMEONE needs to get together and fight for what we believe is the real America and for real Americans! Which is why we support the fiscal conservatives in this fight because they don't want to raise taxes they want to cut the waste and if that means taking it all down so we can finally rebuild our government the way the constitution says it supposed to be, then well, so be it. Yet another reason why our God fearing, law abiding, true Americans like myself need to retain my arms so I can defend myself, and my family, from whatever comes AND help see to it that this Republic is restored as intended.
A: Again, lots of fantastical ideas wrapped in a pseudo-post apocalyptic day dream is fundamentally what you are describing. It seems almost naive in the way that you seem to expect, or maybe even want, the entire country to collapse around you so you can shoot your way out. I think this why there are so many post-apocalyptic movies centered around rogue heroes who are expert fighters and well armed with guns and knives...While it may be fun to masturbate to Mad Max perhaps you can go camping in the desert with a gun and couple cans of dog food and see how well that goes? Aw fuck it, seriously, THAT is not an option!
This is another example why you guys suffer from reading too many Ayn Rand books and watching "The Book of Eli." It's why you are so completely full of shit and "The Tea Party" is everything wrong and dumb about your party amplified to 11. To one degree or another we are what we are and we can't suddenly become either a socialist, repressed, government controlled state you people think liberals want nor a wild-west libertarian shoot out you people seem to think we should be. It's not going to happen, in the end, it's just the bunch of us who have been so thoroughly divided and conquered by the rich that we no longer can tell which way is up. We HAVE to compromise, we HAVE to be willing and able to do so because that is what government, no matter it's size, is meant to do. And financial debts simply cannot be reduced without raising income and you are being willfully ignorant to think otherwise.
HRSW: No, the spending has to stop! The taxation HAS to stop! The Republicans HAVE to fight and they are...This is why you are so uncomfortable because you no longer know what it looks like when someone strong fights back. The country is already well on the way to the end as it is so a bunch of meaningless compromise with a bunch of snobbish academics will do us no good. No more kicking the can down the road, no more half-measures, no more tax loopholes, welfare programs, arts programs, bloated environmental agencies and the 10 million other government "jobs" busy bleeding out the country. Obama can pretend to talk tough and cry about eating peas all he wants, at the end of the day we all know who's fault all of this is...HIS. Which is why IF we had an actual fair election next year he would be out on his Kenyan ass in a landslide even if it was against a joke like Mitt Romney.
A: Obama's fault? How can you seriously even submit that? Where were you during the Bush years? Where were you when Bush put forth the first stimulus package in 2008? Where were you when Bush launched the two other illegal wars on our dime and kept them off budget until he was gone? Where were you when the 2003 tax cuts were implemented? You are here now so where are all those jobs supposedly to be created by the wondrous tax cuts 8 years ago? Even the Republican patron saint President Ronald Reagan had to raise taxes. You said YOU were the economics/political science/historian so answer any of those questions...Expert.
HRSW: I'm sorry, I am not a revisionist historian who conveniently bends facts to fulfill my liberal, rose glassed outlook on the bunny-foo-foo land you seem to be living in. I am a hard working American who should not be taxed by professorial nincompoops so that they can better give welfare to their poor minority friends so they can then join up with union thugs and lazy teachers to further exploit the rest of us real, hard working Americans until there is no money left, no production left and frankly no America left. Just some empty, fat third world shit-hole waiting to borrow and buy as much Chinese and Indian imports as they can. Fuck that. That is not the freedoms our troops are fighting for and that is not the freedom they have bled and died for and god dammit someone has GOT to stand up and make these liberal draft dodgers PAY! BRING IT ALL DOWN! PUT RON PAUL AND MICHELLE BACHMAN IN THERE AND FIX IT BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!!!
A: ...
Well, I think that is enough for this edition of the Great Duh-bait and I think this one had an extra helping of the "duh." We'll see what happens come August 2nd!
