Pop Quiz...Pick the bigger spender

Remind me, which party created the deficit again?

Economic Terrorists

This is what happens to dealmaking when the terrorist wants to kill the hostage regardless. No ransom is high enough. President Obama's "grand bargain" deficit deal is "indefensible" for House Republicans, even though it's to the right of the Gang of Six bi-partisan group in the Senate.

Look, we all know what needs to be done.

- Eliminate tax loopholes and superfluous exemptions in exchange for lowering the corporate and income tax rates generally. I'm looking at you yacht depreciation write-off! (Gang of Six / Obama proposals)

- Raise the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 in slow, steady increases over 5 years with reasonable exemptions for people that actually work do physical labor for a living (like coal mining and firefighting).

- Spend some immediate funds on INFRASTRUCTURE - we're still in a recession people. Unemployment in the construction market is roughly 22%, borrowing costs are at historically low rates (Unless House Republicans blow up the economy due to the fact that President Obama won't let them personally steal DeShawn's breakfast from him "Because that's MY HARD EARNED MONEY!!!"), and those construction workers will end up - yes that's right - buying some stuff which will grow the economy and reduce our deficit.

- But I'm sick of the "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" Congress, because they've actually been the "abortion, unions, deficit" Congress and have achieved absolutely jack.

Belated Happy 4th of July - U.S. Women's Soccer Kicking Butt

[UPDATE: New video because FIFA sucks]



If you didn't see it last weekend, after every terrible call the U.S. Women's Soccer team came back from a 2-1 deficit to tie - a beautiful header by Abby Wambach in the 122nd minute - due to Brazil's Erika and her fake injury attempt to eat up the last 2 minutes of play (the game should have ended at 120mins), which poetically ended up being Brazil's downfall. Great penalty kicks by the US team and a great save by Hope Solo won the game for the US.

As of right now our ladies are up 1-nil against the ladies of France.

Let's go USA!

I told you so!

As I said late last year, the new tea-party led Republican congress would be hard to deal with and they have completely proven me right in this debt ceiling fight.

Before I go on, let's clear the air regarding the debt ceiling. This isn't to raise money for things that we may or may not appropriate (purchase) in the future, as I believe most Americans understand it. The debt ceiling is the amount of money we need to approve to pay the bills Congress has already SPENT, whether it be on the payroll tax cut or the bridge being rebuilt in your town.

Various news outlets are reporting that President Obama and Republican Speaker Boehner hammered out a deal with roughly $4 trillion, yes that's a T, trillion dollars worth of spending cuts in exchange for a couple hundred billion dollars worth of tax increases, and most of those tax "increases" would be getting rid of distorting tax exemptions for things like yacht depreciation, corporate jet subsidies, oil subsidies which started back when oil drilling was in its infancy and other big agriculture subsidies that are either outdated or no longer needed. Sounds like a pretty good deal for Republicans, right? Three dollars in spending cuts for roughly every 0.80 cents in revenue - not bad.

But the tea party led by Rep. Eric Cantor won't have it. Apparently they won't sign on to ANY tax increases, even though these various corporate subsidies are exactly the kind of "waste" they bitch and moan about every year.

And conservative columnists David Brooks and Ross Douthat are calling congressional Republicans on their bullshit that this is anything but a deal that is favorable to them. These guys are holding the entire United States' economy hostage because they think they deserve 100% of what they want at the negotiating table, when they hold a slim majority of one house of one branch of government.

Nobody wins if the U.S. defaults on its debt (the first time in its history), but I would love to see what would happen to Republicans if they followed the right wing of their base into economic oblivion. We'd all be screwed, but we'd see their true colors concerning deficits and debt which is to say, they'd rather keep some random tax subsidies for the ultra-rich than cut $4 trillion dollars worth of spending, including major entitlement reform.