House Passes Boehner Bill; Have We Come Down To Wire Or Is A Deal Imminent? Will There Be Any Winners?

July 29th, 2011 - by: danny

REPUGS PASS REVISED BILL IN HOUSE, SENATE WILL NOT ACT ON IT

The Hill: House Republicans on Friday narrowly approved legislation authorizing a limited increase in the $14.3 trillion debt limit in exchange for more than $900 billion in spending cuts.

The 218-210 vote occurred nearly a full day after it was originally scheduled as Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) agreed to revise the legislation to win enough conservative support to carry the House.

The Republican Budget Control Act faces a near-certain demise in the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has declared it dead on arrival. The White House has said President Obama would veto the measure if it ever reached his desk.

Reuters pretty much reports that the Republican measure that has no chance of passage is actually a stalking horse for a deal, the very argument I made in the blog this morning.

Read closely:but also read between the lines. A deal is coming!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The House of Representatives approved a Republican deficit plan on Friday that has no chance of becoming law but could pave the way for a last-ditch bid for bipartisan compromise to avert a crippling national default.

Today, Friday, join me, your News Dissector for our weekly Radio Show on Progressive RadioNetworkcom. We go live from 1-2 PM but, then, the podcast will be available on the PRN website and on iTunes. Guests. media literacy advocate and web wonder, Irene McGee And radio host and media critic Maria Armoudian.

Breaking News: There is no recovery. None!

WP: The U.S. economy slowed in the first six months of 2011 to its weakest pace since the recession ended. High gas prices and scant income gains forced Americans to sharply pull back on spending.

Friday Afternoon (NYT) Wall St., Prepared for the Worst, in Wait-and-See Mode Contingency plans are in place, positions established and cash sidelined. Now it’s a matter of wait and see.

The White House Has Already Sold Out. A Deal Is Coming.

With Casey Stengel, the great Yankees manager, I believe in the axiom that ‘it ain’t over until it is’ and as of today, it sure ain’t over with lots of twists and surprises still to come on the debt ceiling drama. As anyone who follows this must have noticed, the Obama Dems have come closer politically to the Boehner Repugs, with a last minute deal very much on the table even as some Tea Party holdouts in the House vow to get their last drop of blood.

Could they take it all down, force default or a downgrade, and further terrorize the financial system? Possibly. Will they? Unlikely. They all have districts “too feed” and represent. Remember TARP when the bill was rejected on the first vote? Did it all go away? No way. The bill was changed, and many of the “rebels” were paid off or scared off after the market collapsed.

The Senate then voted first for it, and the House went along. I was with a Democratic Congressional candidate last night, a former member of the House Financial Services Committee, who believes that is the scenario. (He also believed TARP worked!)

The hard-heads of the Tea Party jihad may or may not prevail on every issue but their intransigence and unity has already forced the whole debate to the right. The Dems have already given up key policy demands. There will be no progress on ending the Bush Tax cuts or raising new revenue. Social Security and Medicare will be sliced and diced, and there will be no joy in Mudville as this disgusting game of high stakes poker goes to the wire.

Watch: In the end the Boehner heads will show how “responsible” they all are, and the President will praise them for putting county over party.

Everyone is just trying to please their core constituencies before abandoning what “principles” each side claims to holds aloft.

Gag me with a spoon.

Last Night: The Pressure Was On: Republicans Were On the Vote Hunt But Couldn’t get Votes

Hill: House Republican leaders have postponed indefinitely a vote on Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) debt limit bill after they could not persuade enough Republicans to support the measure.

“No vote tonight,” the third-ranking House Republican, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), told reporters after leaving Boehner’s office shortly before 10:30 p.m.”

This was seen as a big failure by the Speaker who talked tough but could not deliver.

Earlier, The Hill reported late yesterday: “House Republican leaders are desperately looking for the votes to pass Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) debt-limit bill and have delayed a vote that had been expected for around 6 p.m That vote was once again postponed..

The National Journal explained: … passage was still uncertain with running counts by National Journal and other media outlets showing that some two dozen Republicans remained opposed

Washington Post: Bosses spent hours nagging, debating, pep-talking and outright badgering a small band of legislators who were still on the fence.

They couldn’t close the deal and, at the end of a very long day, both sides had learned bitter lessons: Political newcomers learned what an old-fashioned Washington squeeze play felt like. Party leaders learned that old-fashioned doesn’t quite work as it used to.

Prayers Over Polics

An AP story on the pressure police: “House members pressured on debt limit seek sanctuary, report no mistreatment by GOP leaders

WASHINGTON — The stare-down over the debt limit debate had become so fierce that a trio of South Carolina Republicans, pressured by their leaders to agree to a bill they didn’t like, sought answers from a higher power.

“I’m going to pray on it,” Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., said late Thursday.

He ducked into a locked, little-known room tucked between the Rotunda walls and House Speaker John Boehner’s office. Soon, fellow South Carolina Republicans Mick Mulvaney and Tim Scott punched the door combination and joined him.

Scott seemed the least burdened of the three. For him, “divine inspiration already happened.”

“I was a lean no. Now I’m a no,” he said with a grin.”

The O Base Is Also Upset

National Journal: Dwindling support from independents has cost President Obama his onetime edge over a generic Republican opponent, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press that found voters evenly split over his reelection.

Here’s a reality sandwich from Economist Michael Hudson as posted on Naked Capitalism.com. Hudson was in my film Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com:

Michael Hudson: Mr. Obama’s Scare Tactics to Get Democrats to Vote for His Republican Wall Street Plan

You know that the debt kerfuffle is as staged as melodramatically as a World Wrestling Federation exhibition when Mr. Obama makes the blatantly empty threat that if Congress does not “tackle the tough challenges of entitlement and tax reform,” there won’t be money to pay Social Security checks next month. In his debt speech last night (July 25), he threatened that if “we default, we would not have enough money to pay all of our bills – bills that include monthly Social Security checks, veterans’ benefits, and the government contracts we’ve signed with thousands of businesses.”

This is not remotely true. But it has become the scare theme for over a week now, ever since the President used almost the same words in his interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley.

Of course the government will have enough money to pay the monthly Social Security checks. The Social Security administration has its own savings – in Treasury bills. I realize that lawyers (such as Mr. Obama and indeed most American presidents) rarely understand economics. But this is a legal issue. Mr. Obama certainly must know that Social Security is solvent, with liquid securities to pay for many decades to come. Yet Mr. Obama has put Social Security at the very top of his hit list!….

Rob Johnson comment: The debt crisis has been manufactured to further redistribute wealth upwards to the rich. According to Rob Johnson, senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, America does not have an acute problem with default anytime in the next 15-20 years. Meanwhile in order to increase America’s debt ceiling, President Obama is making concessions to the Republicans who control the American Congress, such as budgetary cuts to social security programs.

The Murdoch Chronicle: Follow TV critic/humorist Marvin Kitman on Rupert Murdoch

Reader Supported News: Carl Gibson, Pay Your Taxes, Murdoch.

“If you had only paid a 6% tax rate over a 4-year period, accumulated $7 billion in offshore profits not subject to US taxes, had over 150 accounts in tax-haven countries like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, and used the money from your tax dodging to buy another company, you’d be wanted for tax evasion and money laundering. But for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, that’s business as usual.”

Afghanistan:

Gareth Porter, IPS: Ex-PM Says Taliban Offer Talks For Pullout Date

KABUL, Jul 28, 2011 (IPS) – The Taliban leadership is ready to negotiate peace with the United States right now if Washington indicates its willingness to provide a timetable for complete withdrawal, according to a former Afghan prime minister who set up a secret meeting between a senior Taliban official and a U.S. general two years ago.

They also have no problem with meeting the oft-repeated U.S. demand that the Taliban cut ties completely with Al-Qaeda.

Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai, who was acting prime minister of Afghanistan in 1995-96, told IPS in an interview that a group of Taliban officials conveyed the organisation’s position on starting peace negotiations to him in a meeting in Kabul a few days ago.

Finnish Bomb Suspect Arrested

Finnish police have arrested an 18-year-old man after searching his home and finding items that can be used to make explosive devices. Police said Thursday they were tipped off after finding 10 kg of ammonium nitrate fertilizer from Poland addressed to the suspect. They said they have not found any connection to the Norway bomb and gun attack in which an anti-Islam extremist killed 76 people on July 22.

Federation of American Scientists Fears More To Come: Anders Breivik’s Manifesto Predicts Violent CBRN Attacks

(WASHINGTON DC) A preliminary analysis of Anders Breivik’s 1500 page treatise —2083: A European Declaration of Independence— concludes that the nature of his attacks, compounded with the extraordinary content of his manifesto, raise important questions. His treatise predicts greater acts of terror and destruction than those visited upon Norway on July 22nd.

• Brevik made claims that he is in league with extremist cells and that some of these co-conspirators “are already in the process of attempting to acquire chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear materials.”

• Brevik was motivated and capable of credibly pursuing low-end CBRN attacks—specifically those likely to result in mass effect as opposed to mass destruction

Lawyer Bob Fitrakis on New Evidence of 2004 Stolen Election in Ohio

In the new court filing in the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville case, instead of us and others being dismissed as “conspiracy theorists,” people can make up their own minds. They can look at the architectural map showing how J. Kenneth Blackwell, then-Ohio Secretary of State, allowed private contractors to outsource the Ohio 2004 presidential vote count on election night to a private company, SmarTech, in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

…Also, the contracts signed by Connell’s company and SmarTech can be read in the filing for the first time. This isn’t ancient history. It is state of the art vote theft. It is tied directly to Karl Rove and partisan Republican IT operatives. It could happen in Ohio again, it could happen anywhere in the country. It appears to have just happened in Wisconsin.

Pro-Publica, The Anthrax Case

“A federal judge has blocked, at least temporarily, a Justice Department attempt to back away from court admissions that appeared to undercut previous FBI’s assertions that an Army researcher was responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks,” report Greg Gordon, Mike Wiser and Stephen Engelberg. In an order issued earlier this week, U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Hurley said the government must “show good cause” before he will allow it to change the original filing.

New Film From South Africa

If you are interested in learning more about South Africa and the pressures on its poorest people, see Oliver Schmitz’s brilliant film Life, Above All. I saw it a the Lincoln Plaza cinema in New York yesterday and was blown away by its intimate look at the realities most Americans have no idea about. The film was feted at Cannes. It is a feature but with a documentary feel.

Here’s the description: “Just after the death of her newly-born sister, Chanda, 12 years old, learns of a rumor that spreads like wildfire through her small, dust-ridden village near Johannesburg. It destroys her family and forces her mother to flee. Sensing that the gossip stems from prejudice and superstition, Chanda leaves home and school in search of her mother and the truth. LIFE, ABOVE ALL is an emotional and universal drama about a young girl (stunningly performed by first-time-actress Khomotso Manyaka) who fights the fear and shame that have poisoned her community. The film captures the enduring strength of loyalty and a courage powered by the heart. Directed by South African filmmaker Oliver Schmitz (Mapantsula; Paris, je t-aime), it is based on the international award winning novel Chanda’s Secrets by Allan Stratton.”

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The News Dissector