Obama will one day be in the Republican Party's Hall of Fame, as the Washington Generals are in the Globetrotters.

The sad thing is that I'd say that Democrats don't seem to know how to do that kind of leadership anymore, but first I'd have to believe that they actually do want the same kinds of things I want, things like raising the wage cap on earnings to end the "problem" with Social Security - but I don't think they do.  It's right there, but no one's really talking about it as a solution: it's all about raising the retirement age (benefit cut), means-testing (hey, if you make more than $40K, guess what?  you're rich!) and income-indexing - all of which will take benefits away from people and make it harder to survive.

"BP just scored a nearly $10 billion dollar tax credit, by writing off its "losses" incurred from the tragedy.

The $10 billion savings comes after BP wrote-off the $32.2 billion it set aside to cover clean-up costs, fines, and a $20 billion victim compensation fund."

Q:  Why didn't Hitler drink?

Now with the party being run by the tea baggers, there isn't a prayer that any rational compromise can be reached.

It isn't in the best interest of the Republicans for Obama or the Democrats to succeed. They'll continue to do everything they can to make sure that he fails.

It's like he's swatting at mosquitoes, whatever will get him past the next 5 minutes, the hell with the long term.

I mean, two and a half years in, and we're still asking, "what does he stand for, what are his core principles," etc.

Like a mariner lost in the fog, he responds to whoever clangs the loudest, or who shines the brightest light.

Kyl has played a role in past negotiations with the White House: He was the top negotiator for Senate Republicans in the tax-cut talks with the White House in December. But Kyl threw up several roadblocks to passing the START treaty as part of the tax deal--a top priority to Obama--and the final deal was finally hatched privately between Biden and McConnell.

Reid and McConnell both passed over members of the Senate's "Gang of Six" for the deficit meeting. That group has been working for months on its own deficit-reduction plan and has grumbled about the White House moving forward with its fiscal plan without factoring in the work the group has done.

The first meeting is set to take place at the Blair House, where a bipartisan group of lawmakers met with Obama for a largely unproductive health care reform summit in 2010.

Ok, first of all, the GOP only sent two out of a request eight!  However, the Dems only sent four.

The symmetry of the Catfood Commission is interesting in that its preferences would yield about the same, $4 trillion, over the same period by increasing taxes on almost everyone albeit to a somewhat lesser extent (except, supposedly the poorest) and severe cuts to programs that will, in effect, be more costly to the nation.

In my fantasies, not only would the Republicans block all these awful spending cuts, Obama would fix the medium term deficit entirely with one swipe of the pen in December of 2012 by vetoing the inevitable extension of all the Bush tax cuts and letting them expire. He would have already won his final election and could afford to take the heat.

Like I said, it's a fantasy: liberal governance. Sore of like unicorns. link

"A new McClatchy-Marist poll finds Americans heavily opposed to cuts in Medicare, the government health program for the elderly, or Medicaid, the program for the poor. Voters oppose cuts to those programs by 80% to 18%. Even among conservatives, just 29% supported cuts, and 68% opposed them".