And You Thought You’d Heard it All

Boehner calls on Obama to help Congress avoid automatic cuts
By Russell Berman

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday called on President Obama to intercede in the growing push to change the automatic spending cuts to military and domestic programs triggered by the congressional supercommittee’s failure to strike a deficit reduction deal.

The $1.2 trillion in across-the-board cuts will take effect in 2013, and Republican leaders, along with some Democrats, have said they want to change them to protect the military. Obama has threatened to veto any effort to undo the trigger, known as sequestration, although the White House is still pushing for a broad deficit pact.

“I really believe that the president of the United States has a responsibility here as well,” Boehner told reporters. “He’s the commander in chief, he knows what those cuts will mean to the military and so I frankly believe the Congress still must work with the president to find a solution to our long-term debt.”

                                        The Hill, 12/1/11

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Wherein Boehner brings a whole new meaning to the term “ironic” (to say nothing of elevating “cynical” and “chutzpah” to new heights of ignominy).

Fall Follies Redux

Back at the beginning of August, shortly after the Supercommittee was announced, I posted an item entitled “Fall Follies”, which started off by asking, “Is there anyone out there who actually believes that this bunch will produce anything of benefit to the electorate, or that they will not replicate the farcical dance attending the recent debt ceiling negotiations… ?”.
Now, this prediction took no magical powers of divination to come up with, the committee’s assured failure having been effectively forecast by Republican member Jon Kyl when he asserted that if the committee got into any discussion involving cuts to the defense budget, he was picking up his marbles and going home. Kyl is top deputy to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell whose dedication to doing whatever is necessary to insure that Obama is a one-term president is a matter of record, even if, presumably, the GOP has to bring down the country in its efforts to discredit the Administration.
And sure enough, Speaker John Boehner couldn’t get to his PC fast enough following the collapse of talks to fire off a press release blaming the President for the committee’s failure, conveniently forgetting about Constitutional provisions concerning the separation of powers. In fact, having stayed clear of this ideological sinkhole is probably the smartest thing Mr.Obama has done since his inauguration.
No matter what flows out of Republican propaganda mills over the next few days, the bottom line is that it came down to the question of raising (or, not lowering) taxes. Had the GOP given even an inch on this issue they would have won substantial concessions on social program cuts from the Democrats. But, how was that possibly going to happen when every single one of the Republican members had drunk from Grover Norquist’s cup and signed his no-new-taxes pledge? So, not only was what was left of their reputations at stake, but their honor as well; a toxic political compound guaranteed to produce only stalemate. QED.

Cahiers du Cinema

I'm surfing through the program listings grid on Xfinity (neé Comcast) when I run across a 1956 movie called "Bigger Than Life" about a guy (played by James Mason) who is transformed into a monster by an experimental drug. I figure It's gotta be a campy fifties horror movie, so -- with no Republican Presidential Debates or reruns of Tiny Tim on the Tonight Show available for comic relief -- I opt for the movie.
Well, it turns out that Mason isn't transformed into some sort of malevolent leviathan after all, but into – are you ready? – a Conservative!
As his horrified, but devoted, wife and his equally horrified, but feisty, kid look on, the mild-mannered schoolteacher turns into an Ayn Rand ubermensch on steroids, an authoritarian nut job demanding complete subservience to his whims while going around raving about individual responsibility, obedience, tradition and family (not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just his attitude).
Things begin to get really nasty when he hallucinates that he is Abraham and his son is Isaac. The O.T.-hip among us realize immediately where this is going and emit a collective uh-oh.
As Pop staggers around with a pair of lethal-looking scissors in hand, Mom tries to mollify him (just before he locks her in the hall closet) by arguing that "God saved Isaac", but the drug-addled fiend declaims stentoriously: GOD WAS WRONG!, a line that only James Mason, Satan (or possibly Raymond Massey) could possibly have gotten away with.
Regrettably, the movie then turns from upscale melodrama into mawkish predictability as director Nick Ray tries to wring an unconvincing happy ending out of the proceedings, but Mason fans will not be unrewarded by tuning in.

Aux Barricades!

Occupez La Grenouille!

Quondam et Futurus

In last Sunday’s New York Times, Ross Douthat portrayed Mitt Romney as the “inevitable nominee”. Though lacking any startling insights, the column was nevertheless a workmanlike treatise by a seasoned political observer positing Romney as virtually Brobdingnagian when compared to the field of wannabe and has-been Lilliputians in opposition.

Douthat has gone out on a limb with his prediction, but absent the arrival of a well-funded national figure as a dark horse in the race (if such a creature exists), I’d have to agree with him.

Reaganomics Redux

We read (in "The Hill") that the GOP members of the House Ways & Means committee are working on a plan whereby American corporations would not be taxed on the profits they make overseas. Leave it to the Republicans to come up with a massive tax cut as a kick start for the economy; haven't they heard that Reagan's "voodoo economics" [Bush 41's locution, not mine] create, in the long run, not prosperity but ruinous debt? Hello!?

In the heady days of the legislative takeover by the Republicans in 2004, Congress gave the corporations just such a holiday from their overseas earnings, anticipating that the savings would be invested in jobs and plants. Instead, the money somehow morphed into dividends, flowing directly into the pockets of the shareholders (quelle surprise!). To be sure, many of the recipients did indeed pay a personal income tax on their earnings, so there was some offsetting benefit, but the net loss to the Treasury amounted to $3.3B, hardly the economic liftoff we were promised.

Lord knows, the tax code needs an overhaul (even to include some relief for corporations) but this ain't the place to start, not in this economy.

Dangerous Class Warfare?

The Occupy Wall Street crowd may lack focus or consensus, and have its share of eccentrics in its motley ranks (as does all such street theater), but surely it doesn't represent the "dangerous class warfare" that Mitt Romney makes it out to be.

One would think that a politico as savvy as Mr. Romney would know that "predator" and "victim" are not social-class denominators, but economic ones, and that those are the two forces we currently see arrayed against each other on "Wall Street".

Americans have always easily tolerated the fact that one's neighbor may be richer than oneself. That's life. Material gain is a readily accepted driver of republican society – morally, politically, and economically – as long as it is achieved honestly. But when financial institutions are egregiously manipulated for the personal financial gain of (far too many) predatory individuals within, to the detriment of the institution, the economy, and society, that's when the victims start howling and – if ticked off enough -- even take to the streets to do a Howard Beale: "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore".

Occupy Wall Street may just fade away or may actually become a popular movement if it can get its act together, but, meanwhile, let our politicians refrain from tossing off – in a fever of electioneering – inflammatory sound bites that divide us even further.