Obama Negotiated W/ Terrorists (Tea Party); Made Them More Radical!

Tea Party’s War on America

You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them.

These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people. Their intransigent demands for deep spending cuts, coupled with their almost gleeful willingness to destroy one of America’s most invaluable assets, its full faith and credit, were incredibly irresponsible. But they didn’t care. Their goal, they believed, was worth blowing up the country for, if that’s what it took.

Like ideologues everywhere, they scorned compromise. When John Boehner, the House speaker, tried to cut a deal with President Obama that included some modest revenue increases, they humiliated him. After this latest agreement was finally struck on Sunday night — amounting to a near-complete capitulation by Obama — Tea Party members went on Fox News to complain that it only called for $2.4 trillion in cuts, instead of $4 trillion. It was head-spinning.

All day Monday, the blogosphere and the talk shows mused about which party would come out ahead politically. Honestly, who cares? What ought to matter is not how these spending cuts will affect our politicians, but how they’ll affect the country. And I’m not even talking about the terrible toll $2.4 trillion in cuts will take on the poor and the middle class. I am talking about their effect on America’s still-ailing economy.

America’s real crisis is not a debt crisis. It’s an unemployment crisis. Yet this agreement not only doesn’t address unemployment, it’s guaranteed to make it worse. (Incredibly, the Democrats even abandoned their demand for extended unemployment benefits as part of the deal.) As Mohamed El-Erian, the chief executive of the bond investment firm Pimco, told me, fiscal policy includes both a numerator and a denominator. “The numerator is debt,” he said. “But the denominator is growth.” He added, “What we have done is accelerate forward, in a self-inflicted manner, the numerator. And, in the process, we have undermined the denominator.” Economic growth could have gone a long way toward shrinking the deficit, while helping put people to work. The spending cuts will shrink growth and raise the likelihood of pushing the country back into recession.

Inflicting more pain on their countrymen doesn’t much bother the Tea Party Republicans, as they’ve repeatedly proved. What is astonishing is that both the president and House speaker are claiming that the deal will help the economy. Do they really expect us to buy that? We’ve all heard what happened in 1937 when Franklin Roosevelt, believing the Depression was over, tried to rein in federal spending. Cutting spending spiraled the country right back into the Great Depression, where it stayed until the arrival of the stimulus package known as World War II. That’s the path we’re now on. Our enemies could not have designed a better plan to weaken the American economy than this debt-ceiling deal.

One thing Roosevelt did right during the Depression was legislate into being a social safety net to soften the blows that a free-market economy can mete out in tough times. During this recession, it’s as if the government is going out of its way to make sure the blows are even more severe than they have to be. The debt-ceiling debate reflects a harsher, less empathetic America. It’s sad to see.

My own view is that Obama should have played the 14th Amendment card, using its language about “the validity of the public debt” to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling. Yes, he would have infuriated the Republicans, but so what? They already view him as the Antichrist. Legal scholars believe that Congress would not have been able to sue to overturn his decision. Inexplicably, he chose instead a course of action that maximized the leverage of the Republican extremists.

Assuming the Senate passes the bill on Tuesday, the debt ceiling will be a nonissue until after the next election. But the debilitating deficit battles are by no means over. Thanks to this deal, a newly formed supercommittee of Congress is supposed to target another $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion in cuts by late November. If those cuts don’t become law by Dec. 23, automatic across-the-board cuts will be imposed, including deep reductions in defense spending.

As has been explained ad nauseam, the threat of defense cuts is supposed to give the Republicans an incentive to play fair with the Democrats in the negotiations. But with our soldiers still fighting in Afghanistan, which side is going to blink if the proposed cuts threaten to damage national security? Just as they did with the much-loathed bank bailout, which most Republicans spurned even though financial calamity loomed, the Democrats will do the responsible thing. Apparently, that’s their problem.

For now, the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests. But rest assured: They’ll have them on again soon enough. After all, they’ve gotten so much encouragement.


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Sources: Fox News, Move On.org, NY Times, Youtube, Google Maps

Tea Party Lawmakers Behaved Like Terrorists During Debt Debate? YES! Palin Responds

Tea Partiers: 'Terrorists' or patriots?

The vice president reportedly said that Tea Party lawmakers "acted like terrorists" in Washington's fierce debt negotiations. Is that criticism fair?

Vice President Joe Biden said in a closed-door meeting that Tea Party Republicans "acted like terrorists" during Congress' messy debt ceiling negotiations, after another Democrat said the fiscal conservatives had "threatened to blow up the economy," according to Politico.

Sarah Palin, among other GOP leaders, said it was "appalling" that Biden would use such an insult. Biden's office denied the vice president used the term.

Is the "T" word out of line, even in a political fight as vicious as this one?

Absolutely!

Biden should be ashamed: It would be easy to dismiss this as just another one of Biden's infamous gaffes, says Doug Brady at Conservatives4Palin, if it weren't for the fact that "quite a few lefties" have been slamming Tea Party lawmakers with this "ludicrous analogy" lately.

Sorry, guys, but "trying to prevent the nation's rapid descent into fiscal bankruptcy" isn't comparable to blowing up innocent people.

"Joe Biden: Those concerned about nation's unsustainable debt are 'like terrorists'"

Sadly, the label fits.

"Terrorism is a tough term," says William Yeomans at Politico, "but, unfortunately, it describes Tea Party tactics precisely."

They took "their radicalism beyond tough negotiating, beyond even hostage-taking," and threatened to inflict intentional harm on innocent Americans if their political demands weren't met.

They knew a default or downgrade would murder the markets — and the retirement savings of many Americans — and exploited that potential harm as a negotiating "weapon of mass destruction."

"The tea party's terrorist tactics"

Tea Partiers' behavior was reprehensible, but Not Criminal.

Like most people, we "bitterly opposed the tactic of holding up a vote on the debt ceiling," says James Joyner at Outside the Beltway.

Raising the debt ceiling has always been a mere housekeeping matter, but Tea Partiers used it to "get a second bite at the budget apple." That's "unprecedented and economically dangerous. But it's not criminal." And anyone who doesn't like it can say so at the ballot box.




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Sources: ABC News, CNN, Fox News, The Week, Youtube, Google Maps

Virginia Post Office Under Seige! 5 Held Hostage

Virgina Post Office Hostage Standoff


An armed man in a wheelchair took five hostages Wednesday at a post office in western Virginia, forcing officials to cordon off three blocks of a downtown filled with holiday shoppers.

Shots were fired, but there were no reports of injuries. The man made no demands other than to ask for a pizza, said Pete Rendina, spokesman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. State police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said authorities are negotiating with the suspect.

Virginia State Police sent in a SWAT team and a bomb technician, and police at the scene told the Wytheville Enterprise the man had five pounds of a common plastic explosive strapped to his chest. Geller would not confirm that.

Susan Holman, manager of a store across the street, said officers told employees to leave the building because there was a man with explosives in the post office.

"The officer told us the man had enough explosives to take out the whole block," Holman told the Enterprise.

Mayor Trent Crewe told The Associated Press five hostages were in the building, including three employees and two customers.

Carlton Austin said his daughter, postal worker Margie Austin, was among the hostages. She managed to call a family friend around 4:30 p.m. and said she was fine. Later, her father said, family members were waiting to hear more.

"That's all we can do," he said.

Postal worker Walt Korndoerfer said he was in the post office when he heard shots and a co-worker ran past. He called police and then ran himself.

His wife, Christine Korndoerfer, said he called around 3:30 p.m. to tell her he had gotten out safely.

"My husband is not one to get upset," she said. "When he called, I don't think I've ever heard him so upset."

Town manager Wayne Sutherland, speaking from his office four blocks from the scene, said dozens of officers had circled the freestanding, brick post office.

"It's completely surrounded by police in every direction," Sutherland said. "All I can see is blue lights."

Rendina said the man was in a wheelchair and missing part of his leg, but he had no other information. Postal inspectors from Roanoke and Charleston, W.Va., were at the scene.

Sutherland said the streets of the town of 8,500 were filled with holiday shoppers.

"It's Christmas and all the stores are busy," he said.

Wytheville is the county seat of Wythe County, in southwest Virginia.



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Sources: AP, Huffington Post, Google Maps