(Via Real Clear Politics)
Category: Government
The best words that John Mccain has ever spoken
These are the words of Senator John McCain from the Senate floor. Via his website:
“Mr. President, I rise in support of the release – the long-delayed release – of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s summarized, unclassified review of the so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ that were employed by the previous administration to extract information from captured terrorists. It is a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose – to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the U.S. and our allies – but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.
“I believe the American people have a right – indeed, a responsibility – to know what was done in their name; how these practices did or did not serve our interests; and how they comported with our most important values.
“I commend Chairman Feinstein and her staff for their diligence in seeking a truthful accounting of policies I hope we will never resort to again. I thank them for persevering against persistent opposition from many members of the intelligence community, from officials in two administrations, and from some of our colleagues.
“The truth is sometimes a hard pill to swallow. It sometimes causes us difficulties at home and abroad. It is sometimes used by our enemies in attempts to hurt us. But the American people are entitled to it, nonetheless.
“They must know when the values that define our nation are intentionally disregarded by our security policies, even those policies that are conducted in secret. They must be able to make informed judgments about whether those policies and the personnel who supported them were justified in compromising our values; whether they served a greater good; or whether, as I believe, they stained our national honor, did much harm and little practical good.
“What were the policies? What was their purpose? Did they achieve it? Did they make us safer? Less safe? Or did they make no difference? What did they gain us? What did they cost us? The American people need the answers to these questions. Yes, some things must be kept from public disclosure to protect clandestine operations, sources and methods, but not the answers to these questions.
“By providing them, the Committee has empowered the American people to come to their own decisions about whether we should have employed such practices in the past and whether we should consider permitting them in the future. This report strengthens self-government and, ultimately, I believe, America’s security and stature in the world. I thank the Committee for that valuable public service.
“I have long believed some of these practices amounted to torture, as a reasonable person would define it, especially, but not only the practice of waterboarding, which is a mock execution and an exquisite form of torture. Its use was shameful and unnecessary; and, contrary to assertions made by some of its defenders and as the Committee’s report makes clear, it produced little useful intelligence to help us track down the perpetrators of 9/11 or prevent new attacks and atrocities.
“I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence. I know that victims of torture will offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors will believe it. I know they will say whatever they think their torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their suffering. Most of all, I know the use of torture compromises that which most distinguishes us from our enemies, our belief that all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights, which are protected by international conventions the U.S. not only joined, but for the most part authored.
“I know, too, that bad things happen in war. I know in war good people can feel obliged for good reasons to do things they would normally object to and recoil from.
“I understand the reasons that governed the decision to resort to these interrogation methods, and I know that those who approved them and those who used them were dedicated to securing justice for the victims of terrorist attacks and to protecting Americans from further harm. I know their responsibilities were grave and urgent, and the strain of their duty was onerous.
“I respect their dedication and appreciate their dilemma. But I dispute wholeheartedly that it was right for them to use these methods, which this report makes clear were neither in the best interests of justice nor our security nor the ideals we have sacrificed so much blood and treasure to defend.
“The knowledge of torture’s dubious efficacy and my moral objections to the abuse of prisoners motivated my sponsorship of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which prohibits ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’ of captured combatants, whether they wear a nation’s uniform or not, and which passed the Senate by a vote of 90-9.
“Subsequently, I successfully offered amendments to the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which, among other things, prevented the attempt to weaken Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, and broadened definitions in the War Crimes Act to make the future use of waterboarding and other ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ punishable as war crimes.
“There was considerable misinformation disseminated then about what was and wasn’t achieved using these methods in an effort to discourage support for the legislation. There was a good amount of misinformation used in 2011 to credit the use of these methods with the death of Osama bin Laden. And there is, I fear, misinformation being used today to prevent the release of this report, disputing its findings and warning about the security consequences of their public disclosure.
“Will the report’s release cause outrage that leads to violence in some parts of the Muslim world? Yes, I suppose that’s possible, perhaps likely. Sadly, violence needs little incentive in some quarters of the world today. But that doesn’t mean we will be telling the world something it will be shocked to learn. The entire world already knows that we water-boarded prisoners. It knows we subjected prisoners to various other types of degrading treatment. It knows we used black sites, secret prisons. Those practices haven’t been a secret for a decade.
“Terrorists might use the report’s re-identification of the practices as an excuse to attack Americans, but they hardly need an excuse for that. That has been their life’s calling for a while now.
“What might come as a surprise, not just to our enemies, but to many Americans, is how little these practices did to aid our efforts to bring 9/11 culprits to justice and to find and prevent terrorist attacks today and tomorrow. That could be a real surprise, since it contradicts the many assurances provided by intelligence officials on the record and in private that enhanced interrogation techniques were indispensable in the war against terrorism. And I suspect the objection of those same officials to the release of this report is really focused on that disclosure – torture’s ineffectiveness – because we gave up much in the expectation that torture would make us safer. Too much.
“Obviously, we need intelligence to defeat our enemies, but we need reliable intelligence. Torture produces more misleading information than actionable intelligence. And what the advocates of harsh and cruel interrogation methods have never established is that we couldn’t have gathered as good or more reliable intelligence from using humane methods.
“The most important lead we got in the search for bin Laden came from using conventional interrogation methods. I think it is an insult to the many intelligence officers who have acquired good intelligence without hurting or degrading prisoners to assert we can’t win this war without such methods. Yes, we can and we will.
“But in the end, torture’s failure to serve its intended purpose isn’t the main reason to oppose its use. I have often said, and will always maintain, that this question isn’t about our enemies; it’s about us. It’s about who we were, who we are and who we aspire to be. It’s about how we represent ourselves to the world.
“We have made our way in this often dangerous and cruel world, not by just strictly pursuing our geopolitical interests, but by exemplifying our political values, and influencing other nations to embrace them. When we fight to defend our security we fight also for an idea, not for a tribe or a twisted interpretation of an ancient religion or for a king, but for an idea that all men are endowed by the Creator with inalienable rights. How much safer the world would be if all nations believed the same. How much more dangerous it can become when we forget it ourselves even momentarily.
“Our enemies act without conscience. We must not. This executive summary of the Committee’s report makes clear that acting without conscience isn’t necessary, it isn’t even helpful, in winning this strange and long war we’re fighting. We should be grateful to have that truth affirmed.
“Now, let us reassert the contrary proposition: that is it essential to our success in this war that we ask those who fight it for us to remember at all times that they are defending a sacred ideal of how nations should be governed and conduct their relations with others – even our enemies.
“Those of us who give them this duty are obliged by history, by our nation’s highest ideals and the many terrible sacrifices made to protect them, by our respect for human dignity to make clear we need not risk our national honor to prevail in this or any war. We need only remember in the worst of times, through the chaos and terror of war, when facing cruelty, suffering and loss, that we are always Americans, and different, stronger, and better than those who would destroy us.
“Thank you.”
God Bless Him for standing up for what is right.
(via Memeoradum)
Keith Olbermann was right, The NSA was/is recording every phone call!
The Video:
The Story:
The National Security Agency has built a surveillance system capable of recording “100 percent” of a foreign country’s telephone calls, enabling the agency to rewind and review conversations as long as a month after they take place, according to people with direct knowledge of the effort and documents supplied by former contractor Edward Snowden.
A senior manager for the program compares it to a time machine — one that can replay the voices from any call without requiring that a person be identified in advance for surveillance.
The voice interception program, called MYSTIC, began in 2009. Its RETRO tool, short for “retrospective retrieval,” and related projects reached full capacity against the first target nation in 2011. Planning documents two years later anticipated similar operations elsewhere.
In the initial deployment, collection systems are recording “every single” conversation nationwide, storing billions of them in a 30-day rolling buffer that clears the oldest calls as new ones arrive, according to a classified summary.
The call buffer opens a door “into the past,” the summary says, enabling users to “retrieve audio of interest that was not tasked at the time of the original call.” Analysts listen to only a fraction of 1 percent of the calls, but the absolute numbers are high. Each month, they send millions of voice clippings, or “cuts,” for processing and long-term storage.
At the request of U.S. officials, The Washington Post is withholding details that could be used to identify the country where the system is being employed or other countries where its use was envisioned.
I tend to believe that this program was going on long before 2009. In fact, Keith Olbermann talked about it on his show.
Here’s the videos:
So, again, I have to ask; why is this news? I knew about this, back when Keith was still on MSNBC. Which proves another theory that I was always believed; that no matter which political party is in office, the government is still big, the government still does stuff, like this here, and no matter what kind of political posturing goes on, stuff like this here, will continue to happen.
This is also why I simply do not much get into partisan politics. The same stuff that went on, during the Bush Administration; is still going on during the Obama Administration. Hope and Change was nothing more than a political slogan. The Government had no intention on stopping this sort of a thing. All in the name of “National Security” against something that the United States Government created themselves in the first place! (That being terrorism)
The truth is, that if the United States of America had not opened that military base in Saudi Arabia, the towers in NYC would have never been hit. If we kept our noses out of Arab peninsula; we would not be in the place we are now.
Before anyone says it; this is not a liberal blog posting. I am not a Democrat at all. I voted for Bob Barr in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. I voted for John Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000. I do not vote party, I vote for whom I think can do a better job, than the current person in office. However, I am not a fool. I know how this Government operates and I do not trust it at all. This above, is a classic example of such. I came into this blogging stuff in 2006, as a skeptical left-of-center, knowing full well what happened during the Clinton Administration with the Waco disaster in Texas. I did not trust the Government after that little event and I still do not. Of course, we all know that the Waco siege led to the Oklahoma City bombing.
I will not lie to you; I have been literally on pins and needles, worried that something, like the Oklahoma City bombing, will happen again. Paranoid people, who are scared of their Government, who have access to things, like Timothy McVeigh did; tend to lash out like that. So far, we have been quite lucky that this sort of a thing has not happened again.
I tend to believe that the reason things like that have not happened again, is because of this beautiful thing we call the internet is in place now and with the advent of blogs, and social media; people tend to be more connected and are able to communicate more and are not as isolated. Which tends to make people feel like they are not alone in their feelings about the Government.
Anyhow, back to the point of this posting. The truth is that this Government of ours, has been doing this sort of a thing for a very long time. I tend to believe that the program as described above, has been going on for a very long time. Just under a different name or something to that effect. Anyone who believes anything other than this; is fooling themselves.
Updated with Video: Republicans and Democrats on the hill stand against the Trans Pacific Partnership
Update: Here is video on the subject regarding a leak by Wikileaks on the text of this monstrous thing: (H/T Democracy Now)
For once there is something that the President is trying to get accomplished, that the Democrats and Republicans in Congress are actually standing against. For once, this is a very good thing.
This comes via Mother Jones:
The Obama administration is nearing the end of negotiations on the biggest free trade deal in US history, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). The stakes are high: The pact affects the United States and 11 other countries, domestic policy areas ranging from intellectual property rights to product safety and environmental regulations, and $26 trillion in annual economic output. But in order to secure the deal, President Barack Obama says he wants Congress to grant him permission to sign the final trade agreement, which Congress has not yet seen, without congressional input. A coalition of about 174 conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats in the House signaled this week they would likely vote against giving those trade powers to the president.
The US trade representative Michael Froman and Obama want to finalize the TPP by the end of the year and are pushing Congress to pass legislation soon that grants the president something called fast-track authority, which would allow him to sign the final trade agreement without Congress making any amendments to the pact. If Obama gets what he wants, Congress may not even be able to read the final version of the massive trade deal in its entirety until after lawmakers have signed away their rights to influence it. At that point, the two chambers will only be allowed an up-or-down vote to implement the international pact into domestic law. The administration says fast-track authority will assure other countries that the deal the United States has committed to after three years of negotiations won’t be dismantled by American lawmakers who dislike some of the provisions. No major trade agreement has been finalized without it.
[…]
Many conservative Republicans—usually fans of free trade—feel the same way. “For two hundred years of our nation’s history, Congress led our nation’s trade policy,” Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and 22 Republicans in the House wrote in a letter sent to the president Tuesday. “However, recent presidents have seized Congress’ constitutional trade authority and also ‘diplomatically legislated’…using…’Fast Track.’”
“Conservatives have shown themselves to instinctively oppose anything coming out of the Obama White House. So their opposition is not surprising,” Adam Hersh, a trade expert at the liberal Center for American Progress, says in an email. But he adds that the Democratic opposition is new. “We’re seeing the culmination of dissatisfaction with persistent poor trading outcomes for the US economy” such as job outsourcing, he says, and the feeling that Congress has been “kept in the dark.
Rod Dreher, of whom I owe the hat tip to for reporting this story on his blog says:
Trust him? No. It’s not about Obama personally; Congress gave fast-track authority to Bill Clinton, and to George W. Bush. But the House Democrats who oppose this — and the overwhelming majority of the opponents are Dems — say. Establishment Republicans tend to support fast-track authority, but some Tea Partiers are standing with the Dems.
[….]
I’m willing to hear the counterarguments, but in general, I’m not in favor of giving this or any president the authority to approve something so enormous and consequential without Congress even seeing it. I could be wrong, but it seems that we’ve had enough trusting political and business elites always to operate in the best interests of the American people.
I feel the same way; this is not about Obama personally. However, it is about policies that undermine the sovereignty of the United States of America and literally it is about policies that put the screws to the American worker. We have enough “free trade” deals in this Country as it is; and they are quite literally draining this Country of its GDP. People want to know why there are no jobs in this Country? This is why! Because crony capitalists and the political elites who protect them; would rather manufacture products overseas on the cheap, instead of giving an American worker a living wage.
This is something that we have to stop and reverse at all costs, if we are ever going to be able to put America back as the manufacturing mecca that it once was.
From the “You gotta be kidding me” file: House just voted on 2 bills that would undercut new financial regulations
This one somehow snuck past me.
I happen to read on Populist Jim Hightower’s website about this one here and I went and looked it up and sure enough; there it was in black and white:
The story:
WASHINGTON –– To Wall Street, this town might seem like enemy territory. But even as federal regulators and prosecutors extract multibillion-dollar penalties from the nation’s biggest banks, Wall Street can rely on at least one ally here: the House of Representatives.
The House is scheduled to vote on two bills this week that would undercut new financial regulations and hand Wall Street a victory. The legislation has garnered broad bipartisan support in the House, even after lawmakers learned that Citigroup lobbyists helped write one of the bills, which would exempt a wide array of derivatives trading from new regulation.
The bills are part of a broader campaign in the House, among Republicans and business-friendly Democrats, to roll back elements of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, the most comprehensive regulatory overhaul since the Depression. Of 10 recent bills that alter Dodd-Frank or other financial regulation, six have passed the House this year. This week, if the House approves Citigroup’s legislation and another bill that would delay heightened standards for firms that offer investment advice to retirees, the tally would rise to eight.
Both the Treasury Department and consumer groups have urged lawmakers to reject the bills, warning that they could leave the nation vulnerable again to excessive financial risk taking. The House proposals stand little chance of becoming law, having received a much chillier reception in the Senate and at the White Ho
via House, Set to Vote on 2 Bills, Is Seen as an Ally of Wall St. – NYTimes.com.
You believe those greedy bastards? Jim Hightower is not amused and rightly so:
Audio:
[podcast]
Partial Quote:
On the day before Halloween, the ethically-challenged members of our lobbyist-haunted House of Representatives did a perverse imitation of “Profiles in Courage,” turning that body into “Profiles in Spinelessness.”
In particular, they cravenly caved in to an outrageous and dangerous demand by Wall Street whiners. Such financial powerhouses as Citigroup just hate having their profiteering recklessness restrained by the regulatory reforms passed after their 2008 financial meltdown. Even though the shockwaves from that Wall Street collapse continue to devastate America’s middle class, the banking elite have completely recovered – including recovering their swaggering arrogance and ability to sway money-hungry congress critters with rich campaign donations. — Read the rest at Jim Hightower’s site
I am shocked that more Conservatives are not swinging from the trees on this one here! To their credit, there are some Democrat Party house members that are opposed to this bill and rightly so. This is the same idiotic crap that brought down the stock market and killed our economy; thank goodness there is some semblance of sanity up on the hill.
Sure enough the Bill passed the house, But it is not expected to make it through the Senate and the White House has said that they would veto the thing, if it made it to the President’s desk. Which in this instance is a very good thing. However, this is not the point. What is the point is this: Those same bastards who caused the great meltdown of 2008, are now lobbying our Government to put things back as they were, so that this sort of thing could happy again. That my friends is enough to make an economic populist, like myself, to want to bite a nail in two! 😡
The people that caused the Wall Street meltdown and downturn in our economy ought to be brought up on treason charges, and lined up against a wall and shot! 😡 But, instead, they are trying to buy their way back to lawlessness. This my friends, is an outrage.
Good News for Seniors: Sen. Bernie Sanders Will Be On Budget Conference Committee
I think this is a good thing. Because I do not like the idea of the Republicans attempting to tinker with Social Security and Medicare.
Via The Huffington Post:
In what can only be seen as good news for people who like traditional earned-benefit programs like Social Security and Medicare, here’s one name that appears on the list of Senate conferees in the upcoming Paul Ryan-Patty Murray budget talks — Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders. This ensures that beneficiaries of these programs will, at the very least, have one strong, supportive voice in the room who won’t go down in a squishy heap of “grand bargaining.” (I’m sure Paul Ryan is thrilled.)
Statement via Sen. Bernie Sanders Official website:
Sen. Bernie Sanders was appointed to a Senate and House budget conference committee to create a long-term budget plan by Dec. 13 to avert another government shutdown. A member of the Senate Budget Committee, Sanders said he looks forward to developing an alternative to the stopgap, sequestration-level budget that Congress approved late Wednesday as part of an agreement to reopen the government. “I am excited about being a member of the budget conference committee and I look forward to working with my Democratic and Republican colleagues to end the absurdity of sequestration and to develop a budget which works for all Americans. In my view, it is imperative that this new budget helps us create the millions of jobs we desperately need and does not balance the budget on the backs of working people, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor,” Sanders said.
The conference committee was assigned to try to reconcile differences between separate budgets passed earlier this year by the Senate and the House.
[…]
The Senate budget protects Medicare while the House version would end Medicare as we know it by providing coupons for private health insurance. Unlike the House budget, the Senate resolution does not repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would prevent more than 20 million Americans from getting health insurance. The House version would eliminate grants for up to 1 million college students while the Senate plan protects Pell grants. The House version would kick up to 24 million Americans off of Medicaid while the Senate budget would protect their benefits. The Senate budget calls for new revenue while the House version would provide trillions of dollars in tax breaks mainly for the wealthiest Americans and profitable corporations offset by increased taxes on the middle class.
Progressive Blog Corrent has the full list:
House Democrats:
Rep. James Clyburn (S.C.)
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.)
Rep. Nita Lowey (N.Y.)From Senate Democratic Caucus:
Sen. Patty Murray (Ore.)
Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.)
Sen. Bill Nelson (Fla.)
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (Mich.)
Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.)
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.)
Sen. Mark Warner (Va.)
Sen. Jeff Merkley (Ore.)
Sen. Chris Coons (Del.)
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (Wis.)
Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.)
Sen. Angus King (Maine)In case anyone cares, here’s the list of Republicans:
House Republicans:
Paul Ryan (Wis.)
Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.)
Rep. Tom Price (Ga.)
Rep. Diane Black (Tenn.)Senate Republicans:
Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.)
Sen. Charles Grassley (Iowa)
Sen. Mike Enzi (Wyo.)
Sen. Mike Crapo (Idaho)
Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.)
Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio)
Sen. Pat Toomey (Pa.)
Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.)
Sen. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.)
Sen. Roger Wicker (Miss.)
The reason why I say that Bernie Sanders is good addition to the group is this; Bernie Sanders is an independent populist type. He is not a Obama loyalist, and he will not be afraid to stand up to the Obama Democrats.
I have always said on this blog, that the solution to America’s debt problem is not the ripping out of Social Security or Medicare. The solution is to get rid of the so-called “Free Trade” deals and the pork barrel spending, which both parties partake in. Furthermore, tariffs for all imports would pay down our debt and fund the social safety net.
Either way, it is good to see someone like Bernie Sanders fighting for the seniors and the disabled in this Country; like my aunt, who is developmentally disabled.
The Showdown is over, House Approves Senate Budget Deal
Finally. My friend John can get back to work.
The Story:
Moving with stunning speed, Congress voted Wednesday to end the 16-day-old government shutdown and avert the potential for the first major debt default in U.S. history in a deal that gave President Obama most of what he sought — an open government and more borrowing authority without denting Obamacare.
The Senate voted 81-18 to approve the deal and sent it over to the House, which quickly followed suit with a 285-144 vote on the measure — amounting to an almost complete surrender for the GOP.
Mr. Obama signed the bill immediately early Thursday.
“There’s a lot of work ahead of us, including our need to earn back the trust of the American people that’s been lost over the last few weeks,” he said. “With the shutdown behind us and budget committees forming, we now have the opportunity to focus on a sensible budget that is responsible, that is fair and that helps hard-working people all across this country.”
House Republicans saw the vote chiefly as a way to bring an end to a bruising fight that saw the GOP sink to historic lows in approval ratings, and that exposed deep party divisions over tactics and policy.
“This legislation must be supported, but it should not be celebrated,” said Rep. Charlie Dent, Pennsylvania Republican, who had been begging his party to end the shutdown. “It’s not a win for anyone — not the institution of Congress, nor the president, for that matter.”
Still to be seen is whether the deal subdues the tea party, which had helped push Republicans to take a stand that in hindsight appears to have been futile.
via Shutdown over: House approves Senate budget deal; avoids debt default – Washington Times.
Blogger reactions can be found here and here.
Hmmmmm: NSA Director Alexander Admits He Lied about Phone Surveillance Stopping 54 Terror Plots
Looks like the Obama administration is continuing with the same stuff that the Bush administration did.
Quote:
The head of the National Security Agency (NSA) admitted before a congressional committee this week that he lied back in June when he claimed the agency’s phone surveillance program had thwarted 54 terrorist “plots or events.”
NSA Director Keith Alexander gave out the erroneous number while the Obama administration was defending its domestic spying operations exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden. He said surveillance data collected that led to 53 of those 54 plots had provided the initial tips to “unravel the threat stream.”
But Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Wednesday during a hearing on the continued oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that the administration was pushing incomplete or inaccurate statements about the bulk collection of phone records from communications providers.
“For example, we’ve heard over and over again that 54 terrorist plots have been thwarted by the use of (this program),” Leahy said. “That’s plainly wrong,” adding: “These weren’t all plots and they weren’t all thwarted.”
Alexander admitted that only 13 of the 54 cases were connected to the United States. He also told the committee that only one or two suspected plots were identified as a result of bulk phone record collection.
New lies for old. There is no difference anymore. Hence why I am not voting Republican come 2016, unless something changes drastically on that side of the fence; and I know darned well I am not voting for a Democrat, ever again. 😡
Video: Republicans are turning on Ted Cruz
As I wrote on here before — twice, the Republican picked the wrong game to play here and now, they’re paying for it. Not to mention that the Republicans have been utter hypocrites on the entire Obamacare issue.
The Story:
A Republican congressman said Monday that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is largely responsible for the first government shutdown since 1996.
Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA) told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that while he believes many individuals are at fault, including President Barack Obama, he said Cruz and others who bought into the quixotic campaign to defund the Affordable Care Act “took a lot of folks into the ditch.”
“But if I had to cast blame anywhere, I would say it was Sen. Cruz and those who insisted upon this tactic that we all knew was not going to succeed,” Dent said. “What he did essentially, Sen. Cruz, basically, he took a lot of folks into the ditch. Now that we’re in the ditch, you can’t get out of the ditch, the senator has no plan to get out of the ditch, those of us who do have a plan to get out of the ditch and will vote to get out of the ditch will then be criticized by those who put us in the ditch in the first place.”
Dent said that he will continue to urge House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to bring a “clean” continuing resolution — one that includes no language to undermine the health care law — to a vote.
via GOP Rep Blames Cruz For Shutdown: ‘He Took A Lot Of Folks Into The Ditch’ (VIDEO).
The White House blinks?
(H/T Ace)
Depends on who you ask.
Via HotAir.com:
After weeks of insisting it won’t negotiate on either the budget or the debt ceiling, a top White House adviser said this morning that Barack Obama would sign a short-term lift in the latter to gain more time for a longer-term agreement.
Via WaPo:
President Obama would accept a short-term increase in the federal borrowing cap , rather than one lasting a year or more, a senior White House official said Monday. The statement was an acknowledgment by the administration that it may not be possible to reach a deal on a long-term increase in the debt ceiling before a critical Oct. 17 deadline.
Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council, said members of Congress ultimately have the responsibility to decide how often they want to raise the debt ceiling, although he argued that an extended hike is preferable. …
The Treasury says it will run low on cash in as little as 10 days, placing the nation at risk of a historic default. Some Republicans have suggested that if Congress can’t reach an agreement by Oct. 17, they might try to forge a coalition to support an interim measure to increase the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling for as little as six weeks.
Sperling’s comments Monday suggested that the White House would accept such a measure. The statement was notable because administration officials had rejected a short-term debt ceiling increase during a similar impasse in the summer of 2011, when the White House insisted that the debt limit be increased to cover borrowing through 2012.
Boehner is staying on message. Check out this video via CNN, and notice how they attempt to make the Republicans look like the bad guys?:
National Journal explains why Obama and the democrats have to work with the Republicans:
Obama has at least two incentives to talk. First, there is the matter of optics. Voters want to believe that their leaders are open-minded, a trait they particularly expect in a president who promised to change the culture of Washington. Obama simply undermines his credibility by stiff-arming the GOP. Their obstinacy is no excuse for his. During the last protracted government shutdown, President Clinton talked almost every day with GOP rivals Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole.
Second, Obama has an opportunity to deftly steer an embattled and divided GOP away from Obamacare and to an issue worthy of high-stakes negotiations: The nation’s long-term budget crisis. While it’s true that the deficit has dropped in recent months, nothing has been done to secure Social Security and Medicare beyond the next 10 years. Punting this red-ink quandary to the next president would mar Obama’s legacy.
In April, I wrote that both the White House and the GOP House had incentive to strike a deal that would both raise taxes and trim entitlement spending. The story traced the outlines of such a deal, but the moment was lost. Boehner doesn’t trust Obama and is worried about a revolt from his no-compromise caucus. Obama doesn’t trust Boehner and is worried about a revolt from his no-compromise caucus. The House speaker reportedly raised the idea of a so-called grand bargain at a White House meeting last week, and got laughed at. That is the exact wrong response.
So, we’ll see. Hopefully this shut down ends quickly. As I am sure these people; like my friend John —- would like to get back to work. I say this because of this right here: I am all for political principles. However, stopping Government for the sole purpose of furthering those principles is just unacceptable in the real world. James Antle has it correct; Republicans need to play the long game, and not this sort of stupidity. It is only hurting people that have nothing to do with the political process.
There is a fine line between political principles and blatant idiocy; wise is the man that knows the difference between the two.