This turd-committee is Obama’s brainchild and any blame should be placed squarely in his lap. He is sorely lacking in any leadership skills and refuses to piss off any Republicans or blue dog democrats while throwing the base under the bus.

Love the Chance card.

Are you still promoting the “Democrats are hapless good guys” line of bull?

They’re all pretty much scum working towards the same neo-feudal goal.

Sarcasm

Whew, for a moment there, I was worried we might stop welfare for the slaves and children in China

Counterfeit parts from China found on Raytheon, Boeing systems

/sarcasm

Yes, they’re all scum, particularly obama. I’ve been a democrat all of my life, but no more. I hate obama, yes, HATE!!! He has ruined the democratic party. He’s a monster!!

I too am a former Democrat who has come to hate them.

It looks like the Rats may do well in the next election, and I’ve heard a lot of talk that we may be ready to enter another severe recession or even a depression. So something good may come of this: if the Rats are in power during the crash it may bring the party down, leaving room for a new Progressive party.

The sight or sound of him sickens me.

Super-Dems are just following orders from the White House. Both Catfood Commissions have been demanded by 0bama, and the results have been just as planned. Everyone should remember that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expired, and that today we are living with the 0bama tax cuts for the wealthy. Also too, Panetta was 0bama’s choice for DoD. Nothing going on here which is not in line with the 0bama agenda.

Good morning, pups. It’s Friedman, flying solo because MoDo is off today. The Moustache of Wisdom has a question: “Who’s the Decider?” He gurgles that from India to Europe to the United States, it’s hard to find real leaders these days.

Here he is.

The coffee and tea are ready, and I’ve got a variety of bagels with cream cheese. Sorry I missed yesterday, but Mr. Marion in Savannah was in the hospital and I was spending most of my off time there. (Besides, you didn’t really want to read Bobo’s ruminations on Penn State, did you?) The kittehs were also annoyed that half their staff was missing. He’s home now, so things are settling back to normal. Have a great day.

Is that a zero at the beginning of Obama’s name? I like it!

Good morning all .

Did the traitor to the constitution, o, speak up as the ultimate defender of the constitution against the nazi attack against citizens in NYC or did he order his ss dhs to end the encampments ?

Secret orders to defend and preserve “National Security’ we the citizens can’t see .

There will be no o vote from me next year but bushman karl decides who the machines pick in the end anyway and they picked o and probably will keep him on as he’s as fine a “constitutional scholar” fascist that karl and the bushes could ever hope to find.

What middle class? The increasingly mythical one?

Epic fail of the catfood commission was the best we could hope for, NOTHING good was going to come from there.

If you just let the Bush tax cuts expire, you don’t NEED the commission.

Boxturtle (Though the committee did as well as the whole of congress, with only 3% of the people. Hmmmm…)

Yup, it’s Obama’s mutant stepchild. Though congress has a share of the blame, if they could do THEIR job catfood wouldn’t be needed.

There’s no longer any interest in governing, just in winning.

Boxturtle (and the politicians definition of “winning” seems pretty weird)

No vote for 0 here, either. We should have voted for McCain, at least there would be greater pushback from the Dems. Maybe.

Attaturk is spot on. There was never a reason for the Republicans to negotiate seriously with the Democratic history of preventive capitulation. Oddly, Grover Norquist may be our biggest, (albeit unwilling), ally when he came out and said that Republican leadership in Congress promised him there would be no tax increases. This needs to be pounded into the public over and over. As for defense cuts…don’t make me laugh. They’ll butcher Social Security though it has zip to do with the deficit and they’ll raise the eligibility age of medicare by a decade and the Dems will declare victory by having “saved medicare for future generations™”, while increasing the defense bomb the shit out of everybody budget. This has been the plan all along and even the Democrats aren’t so stupid they couldn’t see it so they must be complicit.

Good morning all.

So many special interests, so little budget.

There was never a reason for the Republicans to negotiate seriously with the Democratic history of preventive capitulation

Aye. Were I GOPer, I’d wait to be invited to the White House for a beer.

Boxturtle (And I’d leave with Obama’s wallet, suitcoat, car title and one of his daughters)

It remains to be seen.

Personally, I think at this point the Dems are well-positioned to capitalize on this: it’s the Republicans, not Obama, that are taking the brunt of the blame for the Do Nothing, Know Nothing Congress.

The only way the Reps can force through a repeal of their Cat Food Commission bill is by threatening another government shutdown. In the process, they’ll piss off average Americans, and even their own base by backtracking on their pledges to “rein in spending” – remember this is the Republicans threatening a shutdown to repeal their own legislation.

Obama looks like the adult in the room compared to these clowns. I think the Dems have done just fine with their messaging on the jobs bill and it’s components and they’ll do even better forcing the Republicans to backtrack on their own spending cut pledges.

Were I GOPer, I’d wait to be invited to the White House for a beer.

Not to mention demand Obama buy it and then launch an investigation about Obama using taxpayer money to “entertain”…

As for Panetta talking about how terrible defense cuts will be, yeah that’s annoying. But it also strengthens Obama’s hand.

If the Reps make a big deal about agreeing to this and the Secretary of Defense goes to Congress and says point blank our revenue situation is a national security concern, that gives everyone cover to compromise.

Personally I don’t think the former CIA director is out on his own undermining the administration’s message: there’s a plan there.

It remains to be seen.

No, really it doesn’t. This is a done deal. All that’s left is the theater.

Then what will the deal be? Please post your predictions for posterity’s sake.

Everyone was predicting massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare from the “Cat Food” Commission – and this isn’t even the first alleged commission. And yet those predictions now seem all wrong.

I already have @ comment 15. Try to keep up though I know that’s difficult for you Democratic Party types.

Gotta go to work! Out.

Middle class is disappearing. Who could have guessed. Major new study.

Obama looks like the adult

Spare me he’s a spoiled 1%er not some imaginary 11 dimensional Genius chess player playing the republicans.

It remains to be seen.

Ah, the 11-dimensional chess argument.

Personally, I think at this point the Dems are well-positioned to capitalize on this

How about the poor and the sick? How about the vanishing middle class? Are they “well-positioned” as well?

they’ll do even better forcing the Republicans to backtrack on their own spending cut pledges.

I don’t know what the Dems have said or done to give you that impression. The impression I get is that most of the Dems are onboard with most of the cuts.

Boxturtle (and Obama is onboard with all of the cuts, just doesn’t want to be responsable for them)

To paraphrase Babs Bush, “things are working out quite nicely” for the 1%ers.

Good article.

The isolation of the prosperous, he said, means less interaction with people from other income groups and a greater risk to their support for policies and investments that benefit the broader public — like schools, parks and public transportation systems.

Shame on you. The people don’t count. It’s only whether your team of 1%ers wins.

Bloomberg and Kelly still have no idea how badly they were defeated yesterday. The Battle of Zuccotti Park was a decisive triumph for the Occupy movement, which is being reborn and is now unstoppable.

I’m in no position to write about income distribution. I’ve never worked on the problem, though I’ve seen it develop over the decades. The unfairness is bad enough.

But there are so many implications and developments that are important that we don’t even think about. Finally some reasonable analysts are doing better work on the issue that might bring some of this out into the open.

Yelp times are tough here in an Northern exerb of Philly.

Plenty of houses for sale or for short sale but the 1%ers don’t do used.

Toll Brothers , their handmaiden, just started a 43 house subdivision starting at $450,000 and it’s already sold out.

The 1%ers are really cutting back too, particle board moldings instead of solid wood molding is their latest rage. What do you expect for a half a million these days ?

Reply to eCAHN @33

I live near Wilmington, DE which is little sister to Phlly. Since the arrival of the Big Banks in the state, the divide between the wealthy and the have-nots has become extreme. Entire sections of the city that were until recently solid middle class are now slums. It’s third world.

I’ll have to check on the Toll Bros. development near here. A couple of years ago (bubble bursting & all that) there were 9 houses built on a 35 lot development. Home building is restarting around here.

Have you been on a thread when I’ve revealed that the Toll Bros made a lot of money owing to R.C. sex scandal. They are big R.C. supporters, so the church was willing to sell them a lot of land (cheap) when it needed the money for payoffs. Which Toll Bros developed & sold for a fortune.

I’m not surprised about the particle board. Toll Bros houses are in such bad taste, nothing would surprise me.

Late to the scrum this morning. MrAngreePee is really sick, and needs time and care.

Don’t worry ’bout that beer, Margaret. 0bama will choose his favorite, Coors Light.

Last I was there, over a decade ago, taking train for meetings along train route, so all I saw was the section bet the train station and the major bank downtown (Wilmington Trust, I think, in those days). Even in that short taxi ride, you could tell that sections of the city were going downhill.

I grew up in Buffalo, a flour milling, steel city. I’m visually familiar with the process you describe, as those industries declined in the 1950s-60s.

I hope and pray this is true. Those young brave people are the hope that this country will turn around. Mainstream seems to have moved on though. Waiting to see what November 17, brings. It is amazing and disheartening that there was an Arab Spring but not a similar American awakening.

There’s nothing Lite about O’s Coors.

I think a lot of O’s biggest financial supporters are not household names, but can hold up big candles to Coors.

The only taste Toll Brothers customers have is in their mouth.

A decade ago was before the law change that lifted the lid on the interest rates that credit cards could charge. Since then the giants have flooded in: BoA, Chase, Barclays. Gentrification and impoverishment soon followed.

Got it. I haven’t been back since that happened.

Sign of the times about Wilmington. Mom still lives in the Polish neighborhood I grew up in. In September the owner of the grocery store across the street from her was shot and killed in a robbery.

http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/delaware/item/24652-wilmington-community-mourns-murdered-supermarket-owner

Yes my hope is that Obama will go down in flames in 2012, paving the way for a Republican takeover and as things get worse they will also go down in flames…perhaps the Democratic party, after a massive defeat will wake up and smell the coffee and become more progressive. Although I fear we are headed for more of the same and a complete meltdown. The 1% want a big war with Iran, so our government, their servants, may provide that as a way of silencing dissent in a wave of patriotic insanity. What bigger distraction and avoidance of responsibility could they cook up? Reinstate the draft to take care of all the unemployed, angry youth, free to enact all the forces of the police state against us, free to tax us into poverty, all outside the law. After all they are operating outside the law now, but a big war would give them the power to do more damage. Yes, I know it’s insane, but that’s who is running the show. WWI and WWII were insane too, not to mention Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War and the current Crusade against Middle Eastern people. Globalization, free market, capitalist economies are going down. So the world leaders are determined to save the 1% somehow, they would make big money on a big war. And a permanent depression for the rest of us. They want a world of slaves.

Right, they are all working toward the survival of the 1%, as industrial civilization declines and disappears, so they can have a feudal society with the 1% in their castles with moats and the rest of us serfs oppressed by their private armies. I know some believe we will have this wonderful technological society where no one dies and our lives are made marvelous by technology, but this is a false dream, our 1% rulers know this. You need resources to drive technology and ours are disappearing. The world to come will be as portrayed by Kunstler in ‘The Witch of Hebron’, a word sans technology, back to the 19th century, best case. We are living through the demise of globalization, free markets and capitalism, that era is over, these are the death throes. What will come next is war, chaos, the collapse of Western Civilization, a desperate attempt by China to take our place that will fail, probably the Gotterdamerung of a big war that will truly end this era, and those of us who survive will be farming, hunting and gathering, doing artisan crafts, living like people did pre-industrially.

Love it!!! sarcasm for sure!

I loath and detest that oreo cookie, one term, TRAITOR, o-bought-ma!!!!!!!

Sorry, Jonathan, O-bought-ma has never been the sane one, not by a long, long,long shot!! He’s s fucking TRAITOR!, and NOTHING more.

there’s a plan there

jonathangelling, Seriously, there’s a plan there? Is this part of the plan that’s been in progress for the last 3+ years with Barry-0 and his cabinent of criminal CEO’,s Blue Dogs and various assclowns? What’s been the result of that “plan”? Hmmm… joblessness between 9 and 25%, depending on how truthfully you measure it. Check. Tax cuts for the wealthy extended, Check. Defunding the government and weakening social safety nets like social Security, Check. More wars. Check. Corporate malfeasance at all levels and industries going unchecked and even rewarded. Check. Protesters being spyed on and cracked down upon. Check. Environment further trashed. Check. America sliding beneath the waves as any form of a liberal Democracy. Right on track. Thanks ‘Bammie.

Let us know more of your amusing fantasies. In the meantime I, and many others, are looking at reality.

It’s not for lack of trying on Barry-0′s part, and the turncoat Democrats. Pull your head out of yoru ass, already. Thank God the Reprobates hate ‘Bammie so much that they will cut thier noses off and derail their goals just to spite him.