Budget talks: This is getting nasty

If "the committee" comes up with some kind of "automatic cuts" plot which hacks SS and medicare to pieces while air-kissing white-collar criminals, there'' be battalions of torch-bearing citizens bearing down on the Goldman Sachs executive suites. You're right in that the devil will be in those details.

 

Innovator? Hardly. That's straight from the FDR playbook, and probably goes all the way back to Andrew Jackson. Maybe even further.

 

All a primary challenger for Obama would do is ensure that a Republican, even one as wacky as Michelle Bachmann, is elected President next year.

Besides, it's probably too late at this point. You need to do too much fundraising just to win in the early caucus states, whose voters go to the polls 5 months from now.

 

So one major party has a shitload of guts but questionable ideas. The other major party has better ideas but zero guts. And the system is set up so that, even if a third party candidate could somehow win, they'd still have to settle for a quid pro quo with one of the major parties to have any power.

Can someone please tell me why I should even bother taking the time to vote? I've voted in every election since I turned 18 - primary, general, mid-term, Presidential, School Board, even the friggin fire department elections. But I'm sorely tempted not to because it's clear I'm going to get screwed no matter who wins.

 

Exactly - Washington is now dead to me. I've decided to make them irrelevant in my life. I've done a pretty decent job of not following the whole debate and I feel better for it. For once I don't have to say "I am not getting that time back".

Sounds like this charade is near conclusion which is not real surprise. What will surprise Washington is how many people like myself have checked out.

My feeling is that the best message we can send Washington is one of zero interest in what they are doing. They gave shown zero interest in our concerns. It cuts both ways.

 

The more important job is to get every current member of the House and Senate voted out of office. The number that could actually run on their record and not be utterly embarrassed you can count on one hand and have some fingers left over.

 

Not voting and showing zero interest is how you end up with the howler monkeys in control. Charade and joke that this is, one thing the debt ceili negotiations proved is that those who scream the loudest have the best shot of getting what they want. Right now those screamers are the Tea Party. I don't mean just the politicians. In 2010, those sympathetic to the Tea Party view did one simple thing others did not -- showed up and voted. The Tea Party won in large part because those who showed up to vote for Obama in 2008 sat out in 2010.

If you choose to sit out, Washington will still affect your life, because someone else -- someone else whose views are not your own -- will be more than happy to step into your vaccuum and fill it. Sure, polls showed people are sympathetic to raising taxes, but are those people actually going to show up in 2012? Are they going to make their voices heard, constantly, with the threat of real consequences if they're not listened to? Not yet, anyway.

It seems pointless to vote sometimes, but your vote, in most cases, is the only means you have to send a message. Not voting doesn't send the message that you're upset. It's taken as an assumption you must be OK with what's going on.

 

Most of what Washington does will have little impact on my life. Sometimes I will have to pay more taxes and other times less. It's just not worth worrying about either way.

 

I don't think it really matters if you vote out every current member or not. Whoever replaces them will eventually be corrupted as well. The problem is the system - both as a whole and of the parties individually.

Besides, the vast majority of the seats in the House and probably the majority of those in the Senate are not seriously contested. The incumbents have the seniority to steer earmarks to their district to buy votes, have districts carefully gerrymandered to protect them, have the money interests (and therefore the ability to blanket the airwaves with ads) firmly in their corner, etc.

 

Looks like the "Asian Markets" are going to open before they can announce a deal.

 

Boehner ought to demand 50 votes out of Pelosi's caucus in return for supporting the deal.

It still gets done, but he doesn't have to twist any arms and some Dems have to make a tough vote.

 

Boner can't rally any votes out of his own party anyway. He's pathetic.