Max Baucus? The guy who fought every jot and tittle of health care reform? Named to the super committee of 12 that will specify spending cuts to be made as per the “debt ceiling” giveaway agreement signed recently?? Remember folks, that only one Democratic vote will be needed to tip the balance of this committee toward GOP business as usual, because you know the 6 that they will pick will be Eric Cantor and rightward of him.
What the fuck is Harry Reid thinking?
What the fuck is the President thinking?
Gee, I sure wish we had someone with balls in the Oval Office. Take Abraham Lincoln, for instance, who faced an even more monstrous and shrill political opposition.
In the turbulent atmosphere that followed the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, a visitor urged him to issue a statement that would reassure Southerners who were “honestly alarmed” by Lincoln’s victory. Lincoln was blunt. “There are no such men,” he said flatly. It would be idiocy to engage in a dialogue that presupposed a reasoned thoughtfulness on the other side, and Lincoln had no problem saying so, thus cutting off pointless discussion.
In February of 1861, a New York capitalist by the name of William Dodge approached Abraham Lincoln in the lobby of Willard’s Hotel in Washington. Dodge, suggesting calamity would come if the Union were to go to war against the South, said, “Now it is for you to say whether the whole nation will be plunged in bankruptcy, whether the grass will grow on Wall Street.” Lincoln replied, “Then, I say it shall not. If it depends upon me, the grass will grow only in the fields and meadows.” “Then you will not go to war with the South on account of slavery?” asked Dodge, to which Lincoln said, “I do not understand your meaning, Mr. Dodge. I will preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution until it is enforced and obeyed in every one of the United States, let the grass grow where it may.”
Worried that Lincoln might prove to be compromising and conciliatory toward the South and slavery once he took office, abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner’s brother George visited Lincoln in January 1861 to express these fears. He found Lincoln adamant. “He is firm as a rock,” George Sumner wrote to his brother Charles. He goes on to quote Lincoln: “‘Give [the South] Personal Liberty bills & they will pull in the slack, hold on & insist on the border state compromises — give them that, they’ll again pull in the slack & demand Crit[tenden]’s Comp[romise] — that pulled in they will want all that So[uth] Carolina asks.’”
Why do we bother calling it a two-party system? We have one party (the GOP) and its lackey counterpart (the Democrats) which does whatever is bidden.
Disgusting!
Time to pepper Harry Reid with complaints. I’d suggest contacting the White House too, but they’re too busy drawing up surrender documents for future GOP showdowns.