don't know if you caught Howard Dean's comments on the issue but he insists that the best possible scenario for Progressives is that we have no deal resulting in higher taxes on everyone, massive cuts to the military and slide into another recession....he seems to think that in the end this will result in deficit reduction and the economy will come "roaring back"...the dems with the help of the media will of course blame the repubs. for any pain during the course of events and enjoy the benefits politically.....I agree with him on the first part, it would be the best "for them", but I'm pretty confident that the minor recession that he believes will occur will be far worse than he anticipates and the "roaring back" part will be difficult as the dems take yet another opportunity of yet another crisis to expand the nanny state, spending and debt....
Going Off Fiscal Cliff The "Best Deal Progressive Democrats Are Going To Get"
HOWARD DEAN: "I make the argument that going off the -- as you call it the curb, I call it the slope, the press calls it the cliff, is actually the best deal progressive Democrats are going to get. And here's why. One, we get the Clinton tax rates on everybody. Will it cause a problem? Yes. There will be a short recession, and it will be painful. But two, we get defense cuts. Republicans are never going to agree to that. And three, there are some human services cuts, which we're not going to like. But it's the least possible damage.
Now what do we get in exchange? A serious down payment of the deficit. The Wall Street people, who wringing their hands of this, are really full of it because what they're going to see is a big drop on Wall Street while all the hype comes and then it's going to be roaring back because finally somebody has done something serious about the deficit.
So, I think the fiscal curb, as you call it, is the best deal that progressive Democrats are going to get. And I think it's the best deal in the long run, not the short run."
Republicans should just walk away, the majority of Americans voted this course and as someone once said, "the voters have spoken, and now they must suffer"....
this guy wrote a lengthy article that's worth the read if you want to consider what is going on in a broader sense...not encouraging however...
http://www.americanthinker.com/print...r_problem.html
"As for the socialist authoritarians themselves, we must not fall into the trap of judging radical leftists as if they think like decent or reasonable people. (The "well-creased-pant-leg-means-he'll-make-a-good-president" fallacy.) What you and I judge as societal failure is, to them, of little consequence in and of itself. For general prosperity is not their goal. In short, the intellectual leaders of the left know as well as you do that their regulatory state with its confiscatory taxation, propagandistic education, and morally subversive cultural elite will not produce prosperity and individual happiness, i.e., that their regime will "fail" the true test of good government."
"In the case of America and the rest of the West, the leftist superstructure (to borrow the appropriately Marxist terminology) is not generally perceived as having been imposed from without. Rather, it has grown from seed within the modern West itself, carefully cultivated by successive generations of an anti-individualist educational elite, an anti-liberal governing class, and an anti-virtue, anti-rational intellectual establishment. As a result, the citizenry has gradually given way to a new entity, "the masses" (once again using the suitable Marxist language), a collectivist majority without any of the reflexes of self-reliance, self-restraint and shame that a virtuous citizenry would have; without any of the respect or capacity for rational deliberation, forethought, and common sense that a properly educated citizenry would have; and without the universalizable notion of freedom -- freedom as an equal, natural right, rather than a childish wish-fulfillment fantasy -- that a citizenry not enmeshed in the mass manipulations of class envy would have."
Hybrid Mode
