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National News Alert |
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House Republican leaders on Monday endorsed a far-reaching plan to rein in the national debt that that would raise $800 billion in new tax revenue, slice $600 billion from federal health programs and apply a stingier measure of inflation to Social Security benefits. House Speaker John A. Boehner suggested that the framework – first laid out by Democrat Erskine Bowles during last year’s budget battles – should serve as a starting point for budget talks aimed at averting the year-end fiscal cliff.
Read more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2012/12/03/boehner-offers-4-6-trillion-counter-proposal/
The Republicans in the House of Representatives lost several seats, mostly extreme right-wing, to the Democrats. The Democrats also gained seats in the Senate. Barack Obama won the presidency by popular majority and by electoral vote. 60+% of all Americans believe that folks with incomes over $250,000 should have their tax rates increased.
As Speaker of the House, John Boehner, is the elected leader of the GOP.
The TV airways are full of Republicans who are calling the President’s plan they received, “not serious.” Many call on Democrats to “be adult”. [Are they calling the Leader of the Free World, "Boy," like they called black men in the old South?] Newt Gingrich‘s victories in the GOP Primary in South Carolina and Florida show us that racism still exists in 21st Century America. We just won the election in spite of their ubiquitous efforts at voter suppression. It is time to tip the silver cup and drink the bitter draft of defeat. Elections have consequences!
The ball is in the Republicans’ court. President Obama got a majority of Americans to agree that taxes should go up on the top 2% of taxpayers. Republican leaders in Congress, Boehner, McConnell and Cantor, have not accepted the election which gave Barack Obama a mandate to carry out his agenda so long-delayed by the partisan and racist war they waged on him in the first term.
At this moment the President has more political capital than ever. He must take political advantage like the Tea Party did in 2010 when they won in the mid-term election. Democrats have power now even though Republicans control the House. It is time to put to an end all jokes about Democratic spines! When they had the advantage, Boehner, McConnell and Cantor were willing to shut our government down if the President would not yield to their political blackmail. This time the standoff is about “going over the fiscal cliff.” Republicans now talk of their being impotent and unable to properly respond to the Presidents overtures. Barack Obama wants John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and Eric Cantor to tell the administration the fiscal limits to which they will agree: Just what they want to cut. ”No,” they say. “You go first.” Yes, another game of chicken. And, Democrats may very well press Republicans up to the deadline. If we go over the “Fiscal Cliff,” Congress can undo some of the damage in January, but, some of us will be hurt in ways that cannot be undone. Whatever happens, it is time for Democrats to show the American people just what kind of balls we have, how strong our spines are. I know that we, Democrats, are reluctant to play this role because of the goodness of the mission of the Democratic Party. However, we must steel ourselves with the realization that we have God on our side and, therefore, we cannot fail!
—GoodOleWoody
At 9:30 am we could get an announcement on whether the US Supreme Court has decided to take up Same-Sex Marriage.
One night I had a dream.
And I was snoring really loudly, and woke up my wife.
She heard a noise at the back door that didn't sound like our son coming off his shift from his new job. She listened as someone came slowly up the stairs and went back down again; and then she woke me up.
"I think there's someone in the living room and it's not Tom;" she said.
