The Whitehouse rolled out its strategy for the credit downgrade "blame game" this weekend, giving top Obama strategist David Axelrod the thankless job of hitting the news shows to declare the financial debacle a "Tea Party downgrade."
Axelrod, along with roughly every liberal in America, is focusing on Standard & Poor's declaration that their decision was made owing to the "political brinksmanship" recently seen in Washington...and pointing out that there would have been no brinksmanship, or even reasonable debate, without the Tea Party. And that much is true - after all, the Tea Party representatives are the only ones who demanded that fiscal responsibility be addressed at all.
But those who would try to blame the Tea Party need to explain one nagging detail: how can the Tea Party be responsible for a massive, unsustainable debt that existed before the Tea Party did?
Representatives of Standard & Poors specifically said that part of the reason for the downgrade is Washington's refusal to deal with entitlement reforms. And by "Washington," they of course mean Lefties such as Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi who stated categorically that no such reforms could ever be considered while they're in office.
Meanwhile, as predictably as the little goosesteppers in today's cartoon, Democrats are flapping their wings and honking that taxes need to be raised as soon as possible.
No doubt in the belief that our credit rating will go up if they can just bring the rest of the economy down.
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25 comments:
Blaming the Tea Party for the downgrade. Didn't see that coming./
One of the immutable truths about Democrats is that they will always tell you who or what they fear by the stridency of their attacks. They are like the snake oil salesman, trying to convince the rube that the same potion that blinded him will now cure his blindness. There will always be rubes. The question for 2012 is "how many"?
let's use obamalogic:
the tea party prevented a further downgrade. doesn't that sound so much nicer?
Was at a party with mostly Liberal friends Friday night. Downgrade alert on my phone hit as we were having dessert. Two of those Libs present (both lawyers and Boomer trust fund babies) immediately chirped up that 'the Tea Party got their way', and recited the MSNBC/WaPo/NYT talking points by heart. Later, they lamented that the all-powerful, omnipresent Evil Tea Party (boo, hiss) is also secretly responsible for whatever turns out not to work with Obamacare.
It's somewhere between a mental illness, a cult, and a quasireligious belief system onto which the nonreligious can transfer their need for absolute blind faith in something (anything). The 16 year old present summed it up after they'd left: "It's like they haven't had any new ideas since they were hippies."
The mouths of babes.
Well, they couldn't blame Bush for it! Far too many people are now actually aware that O's favorite saying is "It's Bush's fault!" But the Obama players are also aware that he has used that sooooo many times it no longer holds water to even the mesmerized, entitlement sucking up, Dumbo-crats! Even the ones who don't read, write or speak English and have to be told what the messiah is saying. Like AHD says ... I certainly did NOT see blaming the Tea Party coming ... and I WAS watching for something like this!
The downgrade should be a surprise to nobody. I predicted it 25 years ago. I think it was sometime between the introduction of the "Earned Income Tax Credit" (which fully integrated welfare handouts with the tax code) and Bush (41) breaking the "...no new taxes" pledge. Since then (with the exception of the brakes put on spending by the GOP Congress between 1995-2000) it's been a consistent ratchet towards unsustainable socialism and insolvency. We've past the point where 50% of the people see a government check as part of their survival strategy.
So go ahead liberals; blame it on the Tea Party. The clueless might buy into it. But as more people become aware of what's really happening, your credibility (and that of the MSM) will be severely tried.
Obama and Axelrod's comedy is so good it's scary.
Really, a force barely 2 years old, and completely disorganized (hey, if they let me in, there's no one at the gate, right?) that there is no "party" or "card" or "membership" or "leader" or anything more than dismay at the way the Democrats complicit with the Republicans have gone on to grow government to unsustainable size, is to blame for the past 50 years of growing debt and deficit? Wow!
That's chutzpah.
Yet another forwarding of The Big Lie propaganda technique from Moveon, it seems. I was just reading the Moveon post my elder cousins are displaying and endorsing (they wade neck-deep in the Fool-aid), trying to understand why a market chart is "all you need to know" to blame the TEA party for the downgrade, and the comments are just delusional over there. I'm all admiration for those bold few TEA party supporters who have the stamina to keep posting sense in the opposing camp. Got all stressed out,came back here and just about fell off the chair with the last panel above, lol!
Funny!
@Angry Hoosier Dad- Not only is this administration selling poisonous snake oil to the suckers, they're making it "free" snake oil (which someone else will always pay for).
@drozz- I like the idea we prevented a further downgrade. How in heck the other ratings outfits can look at our books and still rate us AAA is beyond me. Then again, Bernie Madoff and Enron enjoyed a good long run of positive press too.
@Andrew- Yes, those robotic pre-programmed responses were hardwired in many peoples' hippy dippy youth. Certainly no new ideas (or indeed thoughts of any kind) have occurred in liberals since that time.
@Doc N. Nevada- After this administration (and it's media helpers) labeled Tea Partiers racists, then terrorists, I had no doubt we'd also be the boogeymen responsible for the credit downgrade. But why even bother to look for a boogeyman when you've got Geithner in office? The man can't figure out his own taxes using Turbotax.
@John the Econ- The funniest attack I've heard on the S&P downgrade was in an article in which a liberal economist declared that the move was "purely political in timing, because the numbers have been irrefutable for over a decade." In other words, the problem isn't that the Emperor has no clothes...the problem is that there was finally a kid who said so.
@Jim Hlavac- "Chutzpah" is the yiddish word for what squirts out of a bull's butt, right?
@A Nonny Mouse- Ah, yes...Moveon.org. On my facebook page, several liberals have posted a link to Moveon's newspaper graphic blaming the downgrade on the Tea Party. But even on Moveon's page, they say that the graphic is a FAKE which one of their users put together. It's not even a good fake. But still, the Moveon zombies are shooting the damn thing all over the Internet as if this was the smoking gun they'd been looking for. They really do "peck at their own poop" and think they've got an unending buffet.
What really needs to be repeated is that the Socialist-Democrats have controlled Congress since 2006. If the informal & non-organized Tea Party is responsible for it all this in a mere 2 years, they must be more powerful than anyone imagined!
John - Just a small quibble since you're our Hope and Change Senior Economist. The tea party candidates couldn't affect anything until they were sworn into office in January. To me, it's more like a mere eight months that they've had any sort of power. And of course it's power with a small p.
@Readers- I just heard The Chosen One (finally) addressing the credit downgrade on TV. The same old "chutzpah" and same old lies, mixed with some genuinely evil new misdirections.
As therapy, I've just turned on The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again," and have it cranked to 11.
@Andrew,
It would have been great if that 16-year-old had pointed out to the trust fund socialists that they hadn't had any new ideas since they were hippies to their faces. Maybe that would have had some impact on them. Hippies always thought that "young people" had all the answers...
@ JustaJeepGuy, well, to her credit the 16 year old has been raised not to offend her parent's guests at the dinner table....and as Libs their widdle feelings would have been tewwibly hurt. As noted, Liberals are drawn to their belief system/s not by rational reflection but by their emotional instincts and personality types...an immature craving for an all-powerful and all-loving government as parental figure and provider, for instance.
And because their politics are not about logic, but about deep-seated emotional affiliations and longings, any sustained debate quickly devolves into the personal--they become threatened and offended, get personal, start calling names which are in turn very feelings-based, and generally regress psychologically back to whatever age they were when they first embraced the Liberal beliefs package and ceased thinking for themselves.
@Earl, I never meant to imply that the Tea Party had any real power. It's the neo-Keynesians in both the GOP (now aka, the "suqishies) & the Democratic party who've driven economic policy for the last decade post Clinton.
It's the neo-Keynesians who completely own this mess. The damage has long since been done. The Tea Party, barely existing as a political force 12 months ago can't be held any more responsible than Nixon's dog.
The true historical irony is that the budget surpluses of the 2nd half of the Clinton years was the result of Reaganomics; where government growth was held below that of economic expansion. In fact, by the late '90s, Keynesianism had pretty much been abandoned as a seriously considered economic policy by all but the most fervently leftist economists.
But after the dot-com correction and 911, the liberals and squishies were able to exploit a down and distracted electorate to pick up on their profligate ways. Liberals love Keynesianism as an economic theory simply because it's almost completely compatible with their statist agenda and spendthrift ways.
Don't expect to see our credit rating improved until the liberals and squishies are swept from office, and serious tax and entitlement reform is actually in place. (no points awarded for appointing mere commissions)
Chutzpah is best defined, Stilt, as a kid who kills his parents, then throws himself on the mercy of the court for leniency, because he's an orphan.
SJ, besides your selection for music (most excellent, I might add), try "the punk meets the godfather" from their Quadrophenia album.
@Jim Hlavac- Nice!
@george- You know your music! Quadrophenia is probably my favorite Who album, and "The Punk Meets The Godfather" one of my favorite cuts. I do believe it's "headphone time" for me now - thanks for the suggestion!
Meanwhile, has anyone noticed that London is burning? Yes, the spoiled children of socialism are rioting, coordinating it all via their Blackberries.
How long until this becomes the norm on these shores?
@John the Econ- Sometime between where we are now and where this country is going, I believe we will see rioting and rage like that in London (and other places). Especially since politicians - up to and possibly including the president - will be encouraging it.
I'm definitely no off-the-grid survivalist, but between the insanity in Washington and the pictures from London, I did order a book which friends had recommended called "The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse" by Fernando Ferfal Aguirre.
What intrigues me about the book is that it was written by a man who experienced the economic collapse in Argentina in 2001...so rather than theory, he describes what really happens when prices spiral out of control, the government cracks down, utilities become sporadic, and goods become scarce.
I'm never envisioning a "Mad Max" scenario for our country (unless Obama gets a second term), but those lesser conditions really can - and have - happened in Westernized countries. Gulp.
One of the scariest things is once everything is too expensive for people to afford, they will ALLLL expect the government to provide it, as they have been providing for the "poor" for years now. When the government doesn't have the money, and FEMA doesn't either, then there will be riotings and killings and anger. People do not know how to care for themselves anymore! They don't know how to grow a garden or cook homemade rice and potatoes or help their neighbor or work a low paying job to get by. We spoiled Americans are in for some trouble if things do not turn around. Its not gonna be pretty, with the level of entitlement out there today.
@Suzy- It may easily just be some tinfoil-hat Internet story, but I've read accounts that say the government is stockpiling huge amounts of emergency food rations. I wouldn't be surprised if they're also working on comic books about "how to cook rice."
But again, please understand that I'm just sharing the above as "interesting gossip" and not anything that I know has any actual validity.
Front page news today, riots in London, presumably partially because welfare benefits are being cut....interesting....
I hear Al Sharpton now has a cable talk show. Probably will be the best indicator of when to expect the rioting here to start.
I'm afraid you are right @Suzy. A couple of years ago, I was arguing that the ultimate effect of our "carbon" policy would be to make energy prohibitively expensive. And exactly how does food get from the farm to people? It takes energy!
Of course, an outright economic collapse will result in the exact same thing. Most people haven't a clue how dependent they are upon the well-being of our economy. We haven't known that level of scarcity in living memory. It won't be pretty.
I feel as though we are currently living through the first-3rd of "Atlas Shrugged".
John, I make a point to read taht book every four years. This last time, it was truly frightening.
I can't imagine what would happen if folks started to riot like that in this country - many folks well armed, and determined to defend them selves - not pretty...
@Pete(Detroit), fortunately, in America European-style rioting is much less likely for that very reason. In Britain, there is very little personal risk to being a thug. The odds of being captured, arrested and charged is relatively low. And even if all of that happens, the odds of actually going to jail is even lower.
America, on the other hand remains relatively civilized for the very reason that there is still relatively high risk to such behavior; and not just from being arrested, but what might happen to you while committing the crime.
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