One of the nicest things about having a bully pulpit is, of course, sharing.\u00a0 It will take me another 3 or 4 years to convince my father that he needs to have his own blog, but he’ll get there.\u00a0 In the meantime, this is the first of a series of occasional updates from the Father of the Big Ugly Man Doll.\u00a0 You will note that I come by my ranting skills naturally.\u00a0\u00a0 Without further ado:<\/p>\n
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The Tea Party Downgrade<\/strong><\/p>\n I haven\u2019t read it yet but it\u2019s out there.\u00a0 I just know it\u2019s out there.\u00a0 Somewhere amongst all those Op-Ed opinion makers\u2019 musings there\u2019s a fractured, tortuous, and twisted slice of burnt logic through which the Tea Party Downgrade can get blamed on the President.<\/p>\n I\u2019m talking about the short term of course.\u00a0 Over the long haul, there\u2019s plenty of blame to go around starting with us, the American people who want more in the way of benefits, services, and infrastructure than we\u2019re willing to pay for.\u00a0 Next, are the political parties where the Democrats never saw a social program they didn\u2019t like and the Republicans start wars that are \u201coff the books\u201d in terms of the budget and cut taxes at the same time to implement Republican rules one and two:\u00a0 1) Protect then enhance wealth for the wealthy; and 2) Ensure big profits for big corporations.<\/p>\n Getting back to the short term, Capitol Hill and our Congress have always been somewhat unfathomable, but the last six to seven months are a true mystery.\u00a0 The Tea Party freshmen came to office vowing to reign in the size and spending of the Federal Government.\u00a0 Using the debt limit vote as leverage, they almost succeeded.\u00a0 Victory was theirs (and ours by the way) for the taking, but they didn\u2019t know what victory looked like.<\/p>\n Boehner and Bama came up with a grand bargain that would have cut almost $4 trillion over the next 10 years but the Speaker couldn\u2019t sell it to the Tea Party folks who objected to the relatively small amount of revenue increases included in the deal.\u00a0 Showing their true colors, they remained loyal to Grover Norquist.\u00a0 I sure wish they\u2019d take a pledge to the American people instead.\u00a0 Every poll shows that most of us, even those declaring themselves as Republicans, believe we need a balanced approach to deficit reduction that includes spending cuts and revenue increases.<\/p>\n So we came down to the wire with a small compromise that nobody liked very much, but at least it precluded the U.S. from defaulting on its debt.\u00a0 Then guess what \u2013 many Tea Party folks voted NO including I believe Michelle Bachmann who believes she should be the President of the United States.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t studied the reasons but I can only think of four, any of which would deem her unfit for office in my judgment:<\/p>\n In any case, we breathed a small sigh of relief, and then watched the stock markets tumble as S&P downgraded U.S. treasury bonds because there\u2019s no evidence that our political system is capable of reaching a long-term solution that reduces our debt while keeping our economy rolling.<\/p>\n We now have another chance.\u00a0 The special committee could go above and beyond their call of duty and strike that grand bargain.\u00a0 In fact, Charles Krauthammer, a very conservative columnist provided an outline of a surprisingly balanced approach.\u00a0 They could do it.\u00a0 I\u2019m not holding my breath, but I am praying.<\/p>\n ———————————————————————–<\/p>\n Please note that the opinions expressed above are solely those of the FOBUMD, although in this case they go a long damn way with my own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Out there somewhere is a fractured, tortuous, and twisted slice of burnt logic through which the Tea Party Downgrade can get blamed on the President – in the short term, of course. Over the long haul, there\u2019s plenty of blame to go around – starting with us, the American people who want more in the way of benefits, services, and infrastructure than we\u2019re willing to pay for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1701"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1703,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701\/revisions\/1703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n