Like I said before – who are you going to replace them with? More partisans that reflect our currently divided society? We need rational, pragmatic, cool-headed leaders. (As opposed to politicians that manage to achieve a slick image) Anyone we kick out now will be replaced by a Tea Party Conservative or an Obama Democrat. We need more Boehners and McCains to bridge the divide between hard-math Tea Partiers and –let’s write a bill and figure in savings from leaving Afghanistan in the future and call it a spending cut– Harry Reid.

Boehner is cool. He’s not a weird ideologue like his Pelosi and Obama counterparts. He’s been trying to put together a deal. His problem is that he needs to pull something together between Obama and the Tea Party. Tea Party won’t move for obvious reasons, they were elected to counter the Obama tide. And Obama is stuck in his ideology.

I see the old problem of poor negotiation skills. It’s like I’ve stated before: The strongest leverage one can have in a negotiation – is the ability to withdraw from the negotiation. The Dems certainly can’t withdraw. They’re in charge, and their ideology relies on wild spending.

The only thing keeping the Republicans in the negotiation, politically, is public opinion. And when it comes to the conservative Republicans, and especially the Tea Partiers – some of whom don’t want the ceiling to rise at all – public opinion prevents them from compromising, so they have the strongest of strong positions. They’re using that position to try and purchase some long-term spending controls — God bless their hearts.

This is why the Dems demagogue. It’s all they have — public opinion. This is why Obama/Dems needs to move to the middle, rather than posting signs on the Left calling it the middle. This is the logical reality. They’ll never get the ardent Tea Partiers, but they can get enough Republicans if they’d only embrace some actual math. Obama’s expectations were odd. It’s as if he expects his charm to cause people to do things against their own interest and against their ideology.

Of course, Obama also has his hard Left breathing down his back. But he shouldn’t let that affect him. I suspect Liberal calls are what caused Obama to retract the deal he and Boehner were working on, the one right before Boehner gave up on direct negotiation with Obama (a task Boehner described as “negotiating with Jello,” which I’m sure we can all understand. Obama never really says anything concrete.) Obama will have the Liberal’s support no matter what, even if they’re butt-hurt and pissy. So it’s not as if he needs to pander to them.

But since no one seems to understand negotiation, now we’re doing this bill-voting show… I don’t know what’s going to happen. Reid’s bill will slip through the Senate no doubt. I bet if they allowed some reasonable amendments they would get enough Republicans to pass the House. I wouldn’t bet on the Dems allowing any reasonable amendments though… If I were to guess, I’d say this thing will crash into the deadline for sure, and the Dems will pull some bullshit to raise the ceiling, something that will get us past the election without any spending cuts.

Regardless, the Tea Party really mucked up some good Republican political strategy. It would have been cool if they took those bullshit “tax increases,” the private jet deduction and whatever the other one(s) were, and agreed to them. The zero tax increase adherence isn’t logical if you can trade some zero-impact bullshit tax deductions for leverage in getting some serious spending controls set in stone.

Eeeehhhwww…. I let a zucchini grow super big in my garden as an experiment. Big zucchini isn’t very good. Tough. I bet it would do well in soup. That was the goal of this particular zucchini, but I already had some zucchini soup made.

If we replace congress to send a message, as some suggest, we’ll replace them with ideologues. And the message they take is the message the loud people make, and the loud people are all ideologues.

It’s been like compounding waves. Bush wasted beloved Bubba’s son Al in a controversial election, ending any hope for the Progressive agenda at the time. Then the Republicans legislated aggressively. The laws they passed came through with bipartisan support, and those laws otherwise would have been palatable by Dems if the President wasn’t a Republican, and weren’t very Conservative. But they still trampled the minority and pissed people off, especially when they cut taxes and talked about ending the filibuster.

The Dems saw their chance to strike back when the post-war strategy failed, and they went after him hard, disregarding troop safety or our actual work in Iraq. Certain politicians road this wave, and in 2008, with the help of a recession, the Dems took the presidency and both houses.

The Dems followed up on none of the war ‘ending’ promises, mostly because the revised Bush strategies worked, and they entered reality once in office. They legislated far more aggressively than the Republicans, passing partisan legislation, spending literally every dollar they could. They talked about ending the filibuster.

So all the anti-war independents, fiscal Conservatives, and ideological Republicans suddenly appeared in a powerful mass called the Tea Party. Within two short years, 8-years’ worth of shift occurred and effectively 2008 happened to the Dems. The Republicans couldn’t take both houses and the presidency — obviously. But they effectively crippled the two branches they couldn’t take by hiring people so seriously dedicated to fiscal discipline and not joining the Washington machine, that won’t raise the precious debt ceiling, and we all think we’re going to die.

So now what? I only see people getting louder. Dems are lashing out at Tea Partiers with the same vitriol they’re now famous for. Regular Republicans are mostly quiet, just trying to survive the Tea Party. Like Boehner. He chose a good time to be elected Speaker didn’t he? Tea Party in his party and Obama leading the other.

It’s like a lamb with a shotgun stranded in a life boat with a wolf. What are they going to settle on through negotiation?  The liberal would say “not drowning”.

The problem isn’t drowning though stupid. They’re in a boat. I was going to use an island, but then I’d have to explain that the island is small and lacking vegetation…

I’d like to see a movement that would dispatch some of these overly dramatic politicians. There was some show on Public Radio where they were playing some clips. The “holding a gun to the county’s head” is popular, as is comparing the Tea Party to Hezbollah and terrorists.

One lady claimed the “Republicans” were ‘fraging’ the American people — frag as in the colloquial term used to describe intentionally killing a fellow soldier. She explained it…

Another said elderly people were calling her office “sobbing” because they were worried they wouldn’t get their checks, and that soldiers in Afghanistan keep asking if they’ll be getting paid. Then she says, “Shame on you Republicans for making that happen!” –Yeah, stupid Republicans! What the hell man? If only the Democrats could get full and total power in Washington. Then all the problems would like, get solved and stuff.

It’s no wonder no one will make decisions in Washington. True, both parties are guilty of demagoguery. In this case though, one side is willing (struggling) to make the tough decisions and the other is struggling to vilify them for it while offering no solutions other than borrowing and spending. Of course, for that one side to suddenly become honest required a crop of consciously and intentionally single term congress people.

We should just confiscate ALL of the income from everyone who makes more than 250k this year. (1.4 Trillion) That will almost pay for the 1.6 Trillion Obama wants the ceiling raised. Budget balanced.

Speaking of demagoguery and fiscal insanity — I saw Barney Frank on C-SPAN yesterday, and again today on FOX. Neither time was he wearing his goofy glasses. He needs those back. Without them he looks like just a regular crazy ranting lunatic old man.

How do you guys like the new press secretary, Jay Carney, the one who looks like a 23-year-old? I think he’s doing a pretty good job — and that’s saying A LOT considering his boss. He’s a lot better than Mr. Smirks-a-lot the pretentious dismisser. Gibbs… Boy was he ever in the wrong position. Isn’t there a dog in the Whitehouse he could be looking after? Don’t let him around people.

Whow… Reid’s bill got shot down hard. 50-49 it got thrown out…. Well short of the current necessary 60 senatorial votes to pass anything. lol Didn’t make it to a vote. Didn’t make it to the House.

I was thinking it might get enough votes from Republicans like Brown. Brown said he’d vote for both bills. I guess not.

Baa, baa…

This is so funny. I can’t help but to laugh. I’m watching the House debates on the Boehner bill for raising the debt ceiling. This is how the debate is going:

A Democrat takes a turn and demagogues the bill based on one or more of the following arguments.
This bill will…
End medicate and social security.
Destroy the economy.
…on the backs of the poor and elderly.
Protects the rich [from our righteous anger].
“Big Oil!”
“Slashing education!”
Something about country clubs…
Political theater.
Why don’t you work with us???
Come to the middle you guys. It’s way over here on the left, btw, you extremists.
“They’re trying to dismantle the government! It’s a freighting time!”
“Literally holds a gun to the head of the American Economy.”
“Worst bill that anyone could imagine in the history of this nation!!!” — D-Texas, Sheila Jackson Lee (How does one qualify such a statement?)
“Bush recession”

Then a Republican says his thing. The bill isn’t doing any of that. We’re just trying apply some rational level of responsibility to our money spending. America would like that to happen. Medicare will die if we don’t so something about our spending.

The funniest thing is when the Dems complain about the Tea Party Republicans, when it was just 1-3 years ago that they were shocking the shit out of us spending unprecedented amounts of money and caused us to hire those crazy folks just to counter the dam President. — Backlash — it’s what got you your President, dumbasses. Now we’ve got a government full of idealistic kids and poets expert in demagoguery. I hope we elect some adults come 2012.

I wish we could turn bogus arguments into energy. C-SPAN would be our national energy source if we could… I really shouldn’t be watching this, but I just finished to do list for the next week.

Boy… The house is having trouble coming to order. The jerks keep chit-chatting while a representative is speaking.

My favorite analogy so far: We’re like a family that earns 50k per year, spends 80k per year, and has a credit card balance of 300k.

Favorite Democratic definition: Balanced Budget Amendment = Republican Dogma. (Beats out “tax saving” = tax increase)

Favorite logical consequence of Dem arguments: A balanced budget amendment is radical.

If I were a Liberal (Progressives, not necessarily a Democrat), I’d be feeling seriously ripped off. I thought it saw the dawn of our foretold new age. Instead I got a little bit of cash to sprinkle on crippled state governments that lasted all of about 9 months, and a big bloated piss-poor excuse for a healthcare reform bill.

Conservatives like to complain about the Obama administration, and vilify the big scary Hippy President, and act like he’s done grave damage. But the reality is, things couldn’t have gone much better for Conservatives under a hard-Left President with a super majority. Strategy wise, policy wise, legislatively, Obama’s term has been an unmitigated armature-hour disaster. Obama had the whole cake, we were going to have it all to ourselves, but somehow, on the way in it got dropped face-down out in the parking.

They passed the Goody bill (aka Stimulus) first thing – sort of the self-congratulatory appetizer for the new world of Hope and Change. But after that, momentum stopped. That bill is now a 200-pound albatross around the collective Progressive/Keynesian neck. It’s a big, “See, toldja. Government spending don’t do jack-diddly for a floundering economy.”

After that, for reasons difficult to understand, Pelosi burned down congress with the Cap and Trade bill. Why? Who gave her the keys??? Sure, she was elected to head up the House, but why did Obama let her have his car. Who didn’t think she would immediately squeal out of the driveway and start running people down at random?

Then they finally get to our beloved and sacred health care reform. Now seriously – if I were a Progressive, the whole healthcare debate and legislative process would have me feeling physically ill. I know a lot of Leftists try to blame the Republicans for something… But those Leftists aren’t real Leftists. Anyone paying attention knows what happened, and the Republicans didn’t have a spark of power to do a damn thing about it. That first whole year was spent sloppily ‘negotiating’ one massive bill with Democrats. All the while, Republicans were left out in the cold, able to sit back in their minority and leisurely take pot-shots, picking us off here and there, priming for the shellacking of 2010.

Even after that there weren’t enough Dems to pass the pathetic thing, not that it mattered, because it had been stripped down and ruined numerous purchased votes ago. In my Progressive mind, I hear from my fellow Progressives, “This is a starting point.” Bull shit! If anyone were in charge of this circus, anyone with even a vague idea of what’s going on, we would have passed a “Starting point” bill first thing, gently, the way Obama promised. Instead, we wasted all of Obama’s political capital passing a “starting point” bill that isn’t a good starting point. We’ll be lucky in our lifetime to see enough Progressive political capital to take step two.

It’s like I’ve been saying. If Obama or any of his crew had any experience leading a diverse organization, or negotiate with humans, they would have thrown an arm around the Republicans and gave them whatever they wanted in order to get them on board with healthcare reform. Only, include stuff everyone likes! Only, include stuff that will visibly help people immediately. A year later there would have been, if nothing else, plenty of political capital for a Health Care Reform: Step 2. And in that year, the Dems could have carefully negotiated it among themselves.

Instead, they chose the smash-and-grab technique. They had political capital – so they spent it, loudly and proudly. Get it while the getn’s good. Bamboozle. Shock and awe. And what they ended up with was a sickly bill, scaled back by paranoid Democrats worried about their next election, labeled Obamacare, the distraction that busied Washington while our economy sunk.

As a Progressive, I’d be upset.

If it moves, tax it.

If it keeps moving, regulate it.

If it stops moving, subsidize it.

This upset victory in the South Carolina senate primary is either a really funny democratic screwed up oversight, a physical electoral error, or an extensively sad commentary on voting and voters in our country.

Seriously, think about it, the dems would have never seen this guy coming, ever. No one knows him, he has no history, at least that anyone had time to dig up. There was either no reason to worry about him because of his obscurity or simply not knowing he existed. Either way, this was a HUGE oversight by the dems. They let this no name who’s also an apparent or alleged pervert walk in and take a huge and significant election with absolutely no contest. This is exactly like when people open credit cards in their dog’s, or even worse, their gerbils name. The dems ostensively let the “gerbil”, or in this case, horny rabbit, take the race without checking him out or even bothering to wonder why a fury rodent was on the ballot. No one should ever question or entertain the idea that the government knows best, lol. What a joke.

The other possibility, which I must say I rather hope to be shown to be true at some point in the near future, is that this was an issue with the physical elements of the electoral process. You know, like hanging chads, electoral computer programs problems, and the like. Why would this be preferable? Well, if the dems are dumb and dull enough to get their asses handed to them by horny-show-me-some-porn-rabbit Green, then I am even more afraid for our country than before. With the dems still in control, the only hope is they are not actually this stupid and incompetent. So I think I would welcome this scenario, which is not atypical or uncommon, and would explain a lot, taking the mystery out of it all and shinning light on the situation.

The only thing worse than either of the aforementioned possible explanations of this Green fellow winning this primary is that he won because an overwhelming number of voters, 59%, just picked the first name on the list or used some other arbitrary process to come to their voting decision. If this is what happened, holy shit, we’re screwed. The last great hope we have for change, making things right, and maintaining our freedom is the people. Even when politicians and the government start to go wayward, their is always the check and balance of the voting public. When this last and final safeguard fails, the whole ship sinks. If this wanker Green won because people just voted for the first name on the list, then they will get what they paid for. When you buy cheap crap made in China or Taiwan and it falls apart after a couple days of use, you have only yourself to blame.

I guess the best possible explanation for all this is that Green is secretly a genius, masterminding his advance to the presidency in 2012.

Hey Noisy Dove,
Quack! Just kidding. But seriously though, speaking of quacks, I’ve now head Obama referred to as a fascist, a liberal, a commie, and socialist. These aren’t synonyms, right? So which is he?

Right, they’re not synonyms. But no man is described by one word alone. We’ve had these names thrown around quite a bit lately, mostly toward Obama and his side of the isle. Some people agree on the description while others disagree – and most of this confusion is due to semantics.

Socialism
So lets start with the most frequently used and most semantically abused adjective: socialist. Socialism has earned it’s self a wide definition over the past century. Karl Marx imagined that Socialism would replace Capitalism, as Capitalism replaced Feudalism. And his idea of Socialism was a path to pure Communism – where the workers would take over the means of production and form a “workers’ democracy.”

Of course, Marx didn’t calculate properly for human motivation. He focused too much on the workers’ suffering – their toil for minimal pay under the profiting entrepreneur. He envisioned a world where all workers were guaranteed minimal bounty, and ended the entrepreneur.

As it turned out, prime examples being the USSR, Cuba, and Early Communist China, the minimal bounty, to each according to his need, from each according to his ability, results in a goalless and unfulfilling life. Killing the entrepreneur killed the creator of wealth in order to establish a system of distribution of that wealth.

Today the National Socialist Party, and numerous other organizations, advocates a similar idea, but they have the whole world in mind. They envision a single world “workers’ democracy” with no national borders. This is one end of the Socialist spectrum.

On the other end we have the political parties of certain European countries. I don’t feel honest in granting these Socialists ideological credibility. I’ve become more and more convinced their brand of socialism is little more than populous pandering run-a-muck, shameless vote-buying – elect me and you’ll get this for –free-.

These Socialist political parties advocate for workers rights, including things like vacation time and bonuses. They push for more and bigger entitlements, more government control over business, create numerous lumbering bureaucracies, and to finance these cash-hungry ideas they tax to the limit – and beyond -business and anyone willing to create all this wealth the politicians are promising everyone. They don’t out-right kill the entrepreneur – they attempt to yolk it in order to pull the rest of us. This is the type of Socialist Obama is.

Obama talks about “spreading the wealth” and how people can make too much money – these are Socialist ideas. They come from the idea that capitalism isn’t fair, and it’s government’s job to tax those creating wealth in order to give wealth to those who aren’t.

Communism
Communism is the most inflammatory of the four terms, mostly because we’ve fought a few wars against them, some cold some hot. But if you want to be a jerk, Communism can be used to describe any group working together as a single entity. So hippy-farms and monasteries would count.

Of course, Communism in political and economic terms today describes a military dictatorship, or a government originating from a military dictatorship usually resulting from a successful populous revolution. This describes Cuba, China, and the Soviet Union.

However, if we follow the original intention of Marx, and the self-proclaimed Communist states throughout the past century, Communism is a never-achieved idea. According to the Communist Manifesto, the state must first be overtaken and the people conformed – with force if necessary. (And in all cases bloody awful force was – apparently – necessary) Then, after society has conformed to the Communist ideals, the state would naturally fall away – unneeded.

In actual effect, Communist revolutions, and their necessary force, have resulted in military dictatorships, always under an iconic ruler who is paranoid and ruthless – he had to be. If anything isn’t working out, a factory, a battle – it’s due to neglect of the Communist ideals.

Obama doesn’t fit in here. But men implementing philosophies very similar to Obama’s have enabled these destructive attempts at national Communism.

Fascist
Next we have Fascist. I think this one confuses people the most – I know it does me. This might have a lot to do with the Nazi movement in 1930s-40s Germany, which was a Fascist movement.

Many people see Fascism as the far-right of the political spectrum. This isn’t sensible though. Fascism totally rejects individualism. It’s a political and economic philosophy that can combine philosophies from either side of the political spectrum, as long as the society is organized and highly controlled as one unit – all people serving a single national identity and philosophy – no matter what that philosophy is.

In actual practice, in fact, Fascism ends up being “big government,” the thing right-wingers are always trying to hinder. And in practice, Socialism is Fascism in how it pursues Communism. The only thing really right-wing about Fascism is in how Fascists are willing and highly motivated to defend their nation.

Nazi Germany is a great example of this. People call the Nazis right-wingers, but in form and function the Nazi society ran like an efficient version of the Communist Soviets. Instead of workers revolting against factory owners, the Nazis attacked the Jews and their neighboring countries – stripping them of their wealth to fulfill their ideals.

People were calling Bush a Fascist. This was mostly due to going to war and passing legislation that encroached upon civil liberties. But if that qualified Bush as a Fascist, then Obama also is, since he’s embraced Bush’s expansion of Executive power and the idea of greater government control and national unity.

Liberal
I saved Liberal for last because it’s the easiest and least interesting term. Yes. Obama is definitely a Liberal. And I’m ignoring the numerous uses of the lower-case liberal here. I’m talking about the political term, the one interchangeable with Progressive. A general definition would be this: People should be free but government needs to own that freedom to keep it safe.

You’re free to make money, but government must own that money so they can inspect you, insure your mistakes, and distribute wealth to people who aren’t making enough money to be free according to social standards.

WL (whiny Liberal)

WL: What’s more important, enforcing immigration laws or laws against rape, murder, hard drugs, and spousal and child abuse? The AZ law is the type of misguided thinking that causes immigrants to fear the police. Victims don’t report instances of rape and abuse, and others are afraid or unwilling to offer valuable information to police about serious crime. There are better ways to enforce immigration [strawman alert].

AZ: Indeed, people who are openly breaking the law are often hesitant to report crimes by others or crimes perpetrated upon themselves. But the fact that a problem exists is not a reason to neglect a solution to the problem that is causing it. Many of those serious and violent crimes are committed by Mexicans (often gang related) freely and illegally passing through our borders. The amount of crime is simply exceeding the man power we have available, and the lack of Federal assistance is making such measure necessary to protect our citizens and visitors, regardless of race.

WL: There’s no way to prevent racial profiling. Police already pull minorities over with probable cause for other crimes disproportionately. This law makes it easier for police to profile brown people as illegal immigrants, a problem Latinos are already dealing with. This law would force citizen Latinos and foreign visa holders to keep their papers on them at all times! Nazi fascist state.

AZ: Correct. Racial profiling is one of those things you really can’t prevent because it occurs in the mind of the officer and can’t be proven. But, at least this law tries to prevent it, specifically, unlike the other laws you’re talking about. And, other than prevention of racial profiling, this law has nothing to do with race or skin color. Currently a suspect’s citizenship status can only be confirmed if they are suspected in another crime. The purpose of this law is to allow our police to enforce immigration laws without having to play the game of waiting for more serious crimes to occur.

WL: Immigration laws are in the Federal domain, and so should be enforced Federally.

AZ: Yeah, well, why don’t you try bordering a civil war with violence spilling over, running your police ragged while Washington proclaims your border fence a failure. Maybe this will light a fire under there enlightened think-they-know-better-from-1500-miles-away hopie changie asses! We need troops damn it! Things are getting Detroit around here.

WL: Police are a bunch of uneducated power-happy white guys who hate minorities and violate their rights every chance they get. I know because a cop pulled me over once and I’ve got minority friends. This just makes their bigotry not only legal but institutional.

AZ: Oh no. You got us. We confess. Our officers just love making people miserable, especially the self-hating blacks and Latinos on the force. And while we’re confessing, we should also admit that the reason we keep it so hot here is to keep out blacks and the reason we grow spines on our cactus is to poke the Jews. We’re still trying to figure out how to keep out the Arabs. We’re thinking about a law that requires police to suspect a driver doesn’t have a license if their driving is extremely poor. Ooohhh, I’m so angry I almost like it – Ooooo those non-members of my primitive group. Hmmmmmm, my ignorance makes me want to hit people with a 2×4 when I feel they threaten my click. *fart*

Liberals see the profits “The Man” makes. They want to take them and give them to people they feel “The Man” has taken advantage of in order to earn those profits.

This perspective might be “open minded” as apposed to “close minded”. But the problem with this type of thinking is that it one layer deep. Sure, you can tax Mr. Fatcat’s 100 million dollar profit. But once you do you’ll suddenly see that profit no longer there to tax. He’ll find something else to do. Or nothing changes but the price Mr. Fatcat charges his customers. (I hope for his employees’ sake he has no foreign competition.)

Reconciliation

One of the jobs of the Senate is to keep Bad bills from getting through. Think about it. Think about all of the highly contentious, arbitrary, partisan issues we have and have had that basically split the country down the middle. And think about the other possibilities of a simple majority rule.

The Senate serves as the bad-bill-block by allowing endless debate on the issues. So really serious stuff might take years to hammer out, and unfair stuff won’t get through at all, because you can’t take a vote until everyone is done debating or there are 60 votes to proceed. Blocking a vote by purposely making an endless case is called the filibuster.

In the old days, the filibuster actually involved a guy speaking for hours and hours until enough supporters for the bill dwindled out the door – killing any successful vote for it. But later, a general agreement was made that a filibuster would just be called and you wouldn’t have to perform the bladder/bowel exhibition.

Certain bills can’t be mulled over for years though, like the yearly budget. And often painful cuts and other adjustments need to be made to keep the national debt under control. I mean, seriously – think what a simply majority would do to the deficit! So in 1974 they came up with reconciliation.

“A reconciliation instruction (Budget Reconciliation) is a provision in a budget resolution directing one or more committees to submit legislation changing existing law in order to bring spending, revenues, or the debt-limit into conformity with the budget resolution. The instructions specify the committees to which they apply, indicate the appropriate dollar changes to be achieved, and usually provide a deadline by which the legislation is to be reported or submitted.”

-         U.S. Senate: Reference Home > Glossary > Reconciliation instruction

And what reconciliation basically does is limit debate to 20 hours, eliminating the filibuster option for the minority. That way, despite screams from the minority, President Romney can eliminate gay marriage and welfare while President Palin makes abortion illegal and  institutes Manifest Destiny and subsequently military service to fulfill it.

So you might wonder how – how in the world can Pelosi pass healthcare reform with reconciliation –an obvious budget specific special exception? Well – simple: Congress includes reconciliation instructions in the budget directing certain committees – like the health, financial, or labor committees – to produce healthcare reform legislation that will hit certain spending targets by a certain deadline. This legislation is then stapled to the omnibus bill and sent to the floor for 20 hours of debate followed by a simple up or down vote.

This is crazy right? This is a huge nightmare waiting to happen. We aren’t the first to realize such a reasonable method to keep the cookie jar safe could be perverted into rationalizing that anything can be called a cookie.

That’s why in 1985 the Byrd rule was added, which imposed a set of rules for the reconciliation process, limiting what it can reconcile to legislation that principally affects federal revenues. A tax cut: yes. Some welfare reform: sure. A new Federal holiday: nope. But this leaves a bit of ambiguity – I guess; especially after Nancy Pelosi blows your record amount of political capital in your first six months in office and leaves you wrapped to a particularly nasty bill like Ahab to his wale.

The Byrd rule states that legislation is unfit for reconciliation if it “produce[s] changes in outlays or revenue which are merely incidental to the non-budgetary components of the provision.”  The trouble here though is that “merely incidental” and “provision” aren’t defined. So weather or not something’s affect on Federal revenues is “merely incidental” – like regulating insurers, creating a public plan, or funding abortions – is up to the Senate parliamentarian – an arbitrary referee.

Sen. Robert Byrd is now 92. He says the process was intended for deficit reduction and using it for health reform or cap and trade is an outrage that must be resisted.

But others make the nearsighted argument that health reform and cap n’ trade are deficit reducers. Or they make the argument that, if budget matters are too important to be constrained by normal Senate rules shouldn’t saving live and saving the planet also be exceptions?

Yeah – sure. Good thinking stupid.

Oh that’s easy. One of the causes of these problems is tax cuts for the rich. And the way you get jobs is put people back to work. Then people feel good about this and that and spend money, your boy, healthcare, and so on…

http://www.foxnews.com/search-results/m/28899119/jobless-rate-proves-stimulus-success.htm#q=tax+increase+jobs

… as congresswoman Carolyn Kilpatrick explains.

But for the non-stupid, the way to create opportunity is the big question. My answer will be the old tried-and-true Conservative argument: Hey Uncle Sam, get your fucking mule out the way – I got all kinds of shit I want to do! In other words, people create opportunity. If you want them to do more of something don’t tax it or tax it less. So cut taxes on putting forth effort.

Be careful though. This is necessary but short term thinking. We can’t just deregulate and cut taxes all day long. We need to tax so we can pay for decent public schools so kids like Bill Gates will have access (as billy uniquely did) to some seriously fancy hardware systems and come up with the next revolutionary thing. And we need regulation to make up for irrationality – like not noting that we were in a housing bubble or allowing 10/1 over leveraging in derivative funds. We have to be sure not to try regulating our way to prosperity too – like using Fannie and Freddie to hand any jerk a home loan or two job or not to keep the up-cycle cycling up.

I’d like to say the solution is cutting spending. This would allow blessed tax cuts which usher in business like a land-run. But promising spending is the bread and butter of the Liberal Democrat campaign machine. AND – once you start a program or entitlement repealing it is a political nightmare not to mention the mess of trying to take it apart without a big mess and screwing people.

Of course, as much as Democrats shit on tax cut ideas – how do they court business into their areas? The same way everyone else does. They give obnoxious concessions to giant companies to move in. So you end up with the worst of both worlds. One giant not paying taxes with all the job creating companies footing the bill.

So – the solution: I think we need Obama to come to Michigan and give a speech. He’ll give us plenty of ambiguous andunrealistically optimistic solutions, blame everything on his political opponents, and give us some industry leaders to vilify. He might even try to sell the idea that new monstrous bureacracies will create opportunity.

But seriously – bottom line, make nice with business – all business. Business is the essence of society.