Joke of the Year!

"In turn, Republicans say Obama is acting like a stubborn partisan who will put the economy in peril in order to get his way."*

Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/news/politics/article/Analysis-Obama-could-risk-going-over-cliff-4091855.php#ixzz2EC9tWNey

THAT WAS THE PUNCHLINE, HERE IS THE SETUP.

"Seeking to cement those impressions, the White House is casting Republicans as willing to forgo tax cuts for the middle class in order to protect lower rates for wealthier Americans. Rates for all income earners will go up at the end of the year if both sides can't reach a deal."

Read more: Ibid.

OR WAS IT A STRAIGHT LINE to the people and UPPER CUT from the Republicans?

"Obama has made that case to Republicans before only to back down in the final stages of negotiations. But this time around, the president and his team believe they hold the political leverage**."

Read more: Ibid.

*NOTE: These Seatlle PI quotes included no hyperlinks, those are my sorts.
** It is only funny if you enjoy political hypocrisy, cynicism, screaming and pulling your hair out.  The political leverage and political capital is completely on the President's side. 
(Ctrl F: political capital) ALSO Re:"time" will expire.

(fn)

[Full Crumb ? Or Fiscal Crypt ? ]
[Foundation Culture ! v.c. tetrahedron !]
12-6-12  [Somewhat correlated ?]

Anyway...

I may be slightly facetious but I like facts. I also like doing what Condoleeza Rice thinks she is good at.(see Rice Lacuna : Memo)Drawing conclusions from the titles of pieces or from only the slimmest of facts, which Secretary of Infotainment Rumsfeld says change anyway.

Anyway...from How Bush Really Won Quoting George Bush from November 3rd, 2004 "I have won what I call political capital and now I intend to spend it."

I guess a few million votes may merit some capital, but only compared to 2000 and given the point that it was only the Supreme Court that selected him, I guess we can still call it political. I was going to note that it was the Electoral College or rather Florida and now Florida and Ohio that gave him some capital and we have yet to see how much, let alone what he means by spending it. Are we lost yet?

Now I may read the link or just save it as a hysterical document.

[Updated: 4-1-08 top new link added]

Better Business Bureau

Now this is how to spin political capital.
I mean spend, did I say Bane Capital?
Acronym? BBB (Bill, Biden, Booker*)
Mitt-a-Sketch: Granted, some nuance[**] is allowed, but if Romney thinks the economy has not turned around, then not only does his Bain experience not qualify him for governing, but it is not qualified as economics. 

* see moolah and math
[**]  Bain Capital is fair game and ironic
Speaking of BS and innoculations or shots, Bernie Sanders is taking on Romney on what we can't talk about. Obama will go head on.

Fiddle Sticks^

by George ...

Lede or Ship Politcal** Gaming*.

(fn)
 Boehner tells Geithner, ‘You can’t be serious 
White House to GOP: It’s your move
“The Hobbit” is not a hipster!

(b.s.) "Lede+or+Ship"
Swift craft
Swift satire
M-bed ***

* by Jenga (enough! )
** un-M-bed
*** not to charm but what the?



[Anacronism of asterisks is a real problem between ** & ***, 
but it was through Slate*** under Osmosis** that I found the Doonesbury.]

[[That's the ticket! But this is a preemptive read. Support for raising taxes on the rich even runs over the barrier Republicans have constructed with their new minority of obstruction(4f), except for their "arithmetic" and Twain. Actually the link at TED did not cover the error that is made when comparing percentiles with shares, or per capita with any tiles and individuals with dollars.  Where4, there is more money in the top 1% therefore the top 1% are going to be paying a greater share of the taxes. Not to be competing with TED, but that means a progressive tax will look more unfair the more unfair income distribution is, unless you have a regressive tax.]]

(4f)= a, b, c, d ?   Crtl F and (b.s). for more moderate yet political approach.

^ last insert ? (See "^" there)  It is called leverage and political capital !
[Follow-up].

A Plea to Congress

Please support the President and his economic leadership, in particular the comprehensive if not yet always comprehendible rescues and reforms.

The immediate fixes cannot be perfect nor the long term costs of delay neglected. The powers that are needed are not there yet and must be considered carefully but much of what is on the table was placed there by those who were part of the problem while that alone does not take them away from being part of the solution.

I urge the TARP oversight board and Finacial oversight committees to investigate all bailed out institutions and not only how they came to need rescue, but to make sure they do not get out from under their need to change. Any reimbursement of bailout funds must be complete, and there must be an understanding of how things will be different, before there is any back tracking or refunding.

I think that all political measures should be considered in supporting the four pillars of Obamanomics; Energy, Education and Healthcare reform and fiscal responsibility, as well as the international scope of financial and progressive reforms.

Please see the Humpty Dumpty allegory for the wall that needs to come down, between people and progress.

Sincerely,
Roger Larson

[Update 3-27-09 bold added to Obamanomics: it is a link to an article by the president and international scope has one too. The rest of the body of the text can be read with the links as footnotes.]

[Without getting too into the term "political capital" which the previous administration really had none to spend, it may be something that if you don't use, you lose. I do not see how doing what the people sent you there to do is a risk.]

Political Capital

If I heard it right, I hazzard a guess that Obama's decision on Afgahnistan will shoot him up about 10% in the polls. I must find the appropriate link, but this is hopefully not it. I may have heard it wrong or others have.

[Maybe this? And my "original" source. Or this.]

[Not to mention death panel intelligence.]

Your so vane...

whether vain or preemptive pretention [!]?*
And in an attempt to follow up on each, I will work on reading the whether as much as the preemption. 

Speaking of ge oh metric(or me trick) projects. (fn)
{in (fn) redone duncy...}
[Not sure it fits the Right genre or Uber-genre, but George W. Bush's "political capital" crack.]

*your*(12-23-12)

MoveOn

It might be the watchword but...
at least a just dot org[See update]
and earlier affiliations:
People for the American Way
American Civil Liberties Union
Democracy dot com.
Democracy for America
Organizing for America

These are just a start.
PLEASE check their messages and to whom it may concern.

I recently said that President Obama has been investing his capital*** rather than spending it like the previous president. Not to mention that capital has something to do with what is working or in some cases not. I mean he has put alot in the pipeline*, and there is much more to do, which involves the nature of politics not just being local, let alone the only blame**. I mean in regards to the nature of our security concerns in relation to the international and corporate complexities of economic and diplomatic processes and our diverse and common interests.

*pipeline in this case might be inappropriate or ironic tweaking of what does not work
** or process
*** not necessarily on this blog

[Update on political complexities: from the Progressive Caucus co-chair on health care, as part of a comprehensive progressive process. On the other hand? And on the complex hand of recovering capital.]

Who is "Lighting a Fire"?

President Bush gave a very remarkable speech today. One filled with hope, if not fantasy. While I did not catch the whole thing, many parts of it should be embraced as goals which we could unite behind. A few parts I may have missed, might cast a shadow on how we go about the tasks that we could agree are admirable, amongst them freedom and equality. However as they say, and I may google the who "they" are, but the devil is in the detail. Here is to the hope that he "speaks anew" to us all, and that we will know what he means, and most important that he means what he says.

If what President Bush calls, spending political capital, is any indication, we may have little hope. If it means claiming a mandate by addressing the Social Security "Crisis" when it ranks fifth (question 2) on a list of highest priorities, then we may be in trouble. It may mean only more, Weapons of Mass Distraction.

Maybe he has been a uniter not a divider, as the poll shows the top concerns of those finding need for hope. While hope may be found even in those that worry, the issues which are of concern are "the situation in Iraq" and "the economy and jobs" (same link, same question). We must have hope, but it is how we work for it that matters. The process does matter or the fire will be suffocated.

We must remember and remind others that when Bush was told "you broke it, you own it" about Iraq, that we are the ones that will pay for it. Now we must make sure that while we may need to improve social security, we do not want to break it.

Brackets and the Debt Clock

[9-26-11 UPDATE: Tax Plan and "Fiscal Terrorism" A slight rearrangement and edit for clarity below. ]

[In might be easier if the links and asterisks are referenced later.***]

The whole issue of cuts over revenues * _ must be sorted out on two fronts. There is the issue of the so-called "progressive" tax code. Then there is the issue of the history of the tax code(see* pun), and how it impacts the debt clock.

The first regards the "Buffet Rule". There are the actual tax bracket rates(10% to 35%), and then there is the effective tax rate, which is further complicated(reduced) by captial gains tax rates(15%). Let us also be reminded that even the richest pay the same rates for their first brackets worth of income,(ZERO), let alone each bracket's worth of income. But since the capital gains tax is most of the income of the bulk of the rich, the effective tax rate will not be the actual sum of each bracket's worth. I will not bother to do some math here, but I hope it is clear. Basically the effective tax rate for the rich are not effective as "progressive" by a look at their brackets. They effectively get a lower tax rate, because capital gains are taxed less than the middle to top income brackets.

Second, there is the matter of the "Debt Clock", which should have its own brackets of sorts. The Bush wars, as well as his Medicare(fix), not to mention his tax cuts are off the clock so-to-speak. Not to mention the economic down turn which should probably reset the clock. If I was able to clarify the first issue, I don't mean to make up for it by complicating the second. But the "spending under borrowing" is more than a pun, it is an economic effect. For now I just mean to address the clock issue. Where I imagine that there could be some way to show previous administration's as well as the current administration's** debt clocks.

Now, I hope that I can get away with not providing more detail. But it is not so simple, as I almost closed the issue. It would not be simply an historical replay of their debt clocks, but a sorting of the debt from their budgets. So we would have several clocks at different brackets in time. This is the matter, where the devil is in the details. This almost becomes a matter for mathematical physicists in regard to the dynamics of budgets and time, in that each bracket in time has potential future impact where political economists would sit in for the mathematical physicists.

But, I hope that it can be imagined that each bracket in time, have two clocks. Their own budget and the debt that was not theirs. I will leave it for real economists or accountants to sort out whether there needs to be more than two, as I don't know if it is just my imagination, or the reality of the difficulty in sorting this out. In this regard, I mean the difficulty of sorting a budget's impact over time. But maybe it can be imagined from the effective impact that war and medicare can have on people and how dynamic that is over time, let alone the setting of tax rates. In fact, that is addressed by one or two instances alone. The Bush tax cuts were temporary. The Bush wars and the Medicare fix were not paid for.



[Please note that the links and image were inserted after completion of this blog post. They include, in order: The New York Times, FOX NEWS, No-Labels, and the Center for American Progress [9-26-11: OurFuture.org], where it was not my intent to lower the level of discourse nor bring more nuanced metaphor to light. But please note my No-Labels comment, in regard to the referees and what is on the table. Not to pun on a game buffet, but the neither the cuts sandwich nor the sand wedged in links were referenced for the writing of this post. But it may be suitable that brackets and clocks are used in games. This is a not so nuanced reference to the sports analogy of politics.]

*which alone needs some economic sorting: I mean "spending under borrowing", to pun a bit.
** oops, a whole new clock issue, why not bracket it by congresses?
*** not to mention by myself

[9-23-11 Update 'nuff s' Ed?] Iron Chef!

[9-29-11 update on timing, see comment 2. Speaking of timing,(darn) lost it for a moment.]

Mitt's BO*Son

Not to get too physicsCal,
but the Mitt Flop of mass theory is Political.
Is it the Tetrahedron of Won't or Wont?

Share ’N Angle
Issa Coverup Committee
Cain TV
Rance Priebus


The Devo Incar-n8?

You do the math.
Or Revoo due the math !

Why is Raw Money a uniter not a divider, because they can't do the math. 
[Ctrl F Intents Post B.S.]

* past particle pun

[7-10-12 Pardon my pun getting lost in the physics, boss. 
Speaking of bookin'** or book ends.***]

 ** tan gent (or ge oh me try***)
*** not gun a go there
[but Kan'T : A Brief Incite?]
[I may have smoothed the edges of my pairaGone.]
[Speaking of NOW: DWS "Class Act" What about capital gains? People v. R-Money. (Share 'n Angle v. Robbin' Hood)  Those poor 1,2,3%!]
[NTM: Jansing &Co.][CW: Caricature Writer @DWS.cc]
[P. S.]