Yeah right Rush, Obama's such a radical leftist he made the Bush tax cuts permanent and made the Heritage Foundation's individual mandate the centerpiece of Obamacare

You are a ding dong.

Since 2012 Republicans have voted against the Bush tax cuts and against repeal of Obamacare

We have no representation.

Flashback January 1, 2013, 2257 hours: 151 House Republicans who voted against making the Bush tax cuts permanent

The roll call vote is here.

Adams Aderholt Akin Amash Amodei Austria Bachmann Bachus Bartlett Barton (TX) Berg Bilirakis Bishop (UT) Black Blackburn Bonner Boustany Brooks Broun (GA) Bucshon Burgess Campbell Canseco Cantor Capito Carter Cassidy Chabot Chaffetz Coffman (CO) Conaway Cravaack Crawford Culberson DesJarlais Duffy Duncan (SC) Duncan (TN) Ellmers Farenthold Fincher Flake Fleischmann Fleming Flores Forbes Foxx Franks (AZ) Gardner Garrett

Gibbs Gingrey (GA) Gohmert Goodlatte Gosar Gowdy Granger Graves (GA) Griffin (AR) Griffith (VA) Guinta Guthrie Hall Harper Harris Hartzler Hensarling Huelskamp Huizenga (MI) Hultgren Hunter Hurt Issa Jenkins Johnson, Sam Jones Jordan King (IA) Kingston Labrador Lamborn Landry Lankford Latham Long Lummis Mack Marchant Massie McCarthy (CA) McCaul McClintock McHenry McKinley Mica Miller (FL) Mulvaney Myrick Neugebauer Nugent Nunes

Nunnelee Olson Palazzo Paulsen Pearce Pence Petri Poe (TX) Pompeo Posey Price (GA) Quayle Rehberg Renacci Rigell Rivera Roby Roe (TN) Rogers (AL) Rohrabacher Rokita Rooney Roskam Ross (FL) Scalise Schilling Schmidt Schweikert Scott (SC) Scott, Austin Sensenbrenner Smith (NE) Southerland Stearns Stutzman Terry Tipton Turner (OH) Walberg Walsh (IL) Webster West Westmoreland Whitfield Wilson (SC) Wittman Wolf Woodall Yoder Young (IN)

Flashback January 1, 2013, 0159 hours: Senate Republicans who voted against making the Bush tax cuts permanent

From the roll call vote (89-8-3) here:

Grassley of Iowa, Lee of Utah, Paul of Kentucky, Rubio of Florida, Shelby of Alabama.

Demented Jim of South Carolina didn't vote, and neither did Mark Kirk of Illinois (stroke victim).

Democrats still controlled the Senate at the time, the close of the 112th Congress, 53-47. Their caucus power increased by 2 in the 113th Congress.

Obama didn't "decimate" the Democrat Party, Democrats did that all by themselves

David M. Drucker here wants to blame Obama for all the electoral losses experienced by Democrats since 2009. 

Good luck with that.

Like it or not, the Democrat Congress under Pelosi and Reid gets the blame. They have done nothing but lose, lose and lose while Obama has remained the winner, above the fray. He leaves office popular, successfully escaping responsibility for his own administration for eight straight years while Democrats all over the country have paid the price.  

Democrat leadership rammed the awful Obamacare down the nation's throat, making the health insurance industry even worse than it was before. Democrat leadership failed to prosecute anyone for the 2008 banking panic and raked in the campaign cash from its grateful elite instead. Democrat leadership jacked up the federal spending which simply wasted money and ballooned the debt to $20 trillion in the process. Democrat leadership passed the growth-robbing Dodd-Frank legislation which has stalled the growth of credit and slowed the economy to a crawl.

The only thing you can blame Obama for is a lack of vision and leadership in preventing these developments and for not offering better alternatives. He was inexperienced, out of his depth and clueless, contenting himself to lecture everybody day and night in regal fashion while Congress shot themselves and the country in the foot with their stupid ideas. Obama's idea of compromise turned out to be signing awful Democrat legislation.

Except in one instance.

Obama agreed one time to compromise with John Boehner and make the Bush tax cuts permanent and fix the Alternative Minimum Tax. The stock market and the economy began to recover from that moment on at the dawn of 2013.

It was the only smart thing he ever did.

And there he goes into the sunset.

Trump rewards Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for stonewalling Obama's Supreme Court appointment by picking his wife for Transportation

I don't view this as "nepotism" per se as others have who are much too quick to criticize Trump's centrism post-election.

Mitch McConnell withstood Obama's appointment power all through this period since the death of Scalia, enduring severe attacks for it from the left. People on the right who won't recognize what he accomplished are simply malign. They are like those who didn't recognize John Boehner's achievement getting the Bush tax cuts made permanent, and in many cases they are the same people, and unfortunately they are Legion.

McConnell's wife Elaine Chao had eight years' cabinet experience as head of Labor under Bush II and is competent to govern Transportation now under Trump. Not that we want her to have much to administer.

It is not a consequential appointment, except in the broad sense that Trump is not in the least setting about to take a machete to the federal Leviathan. Chao will maintain the status quo, more or less.

Sean Trende spells out the achievements of John Boehner

Sean Trende notes that:

• federal expenditures on a quarterly basis flatlined beginning in early 2011, right when Republicans took control of the House under Boehner, largely because of sequestration won in the debt ceiling showdown that year despite controlling only one chamber of Congress, "no small feat";

• even "more impressive" was the fiscal cliff deal brokered by John Boehner in late 2012, making the Bush tax cuts permanent, again with control of only the House of Representatives;

• Boehner "managed to kill" the immigration bill that came out of Mitch McConnell's US Senate, despite "substantial internal pressures" all around to pass it.

Much more at the link.

Politico lies about what John Boehner and Barack Obama accomplished together

Here:

"But [Boehner's] tenure will also be remembered for his complicated relationship with President Barack Obama. He and Obama tried — but repeatedly failed — to cut a deal on a sweeping fiscal agreement."

Boehner got the Bush tax cuts made permanent, and under a Democrat president no less, something Bush couldn't do while he himself was president. If I were Politico I wouldn't mention it, either.

Boehner also got the fix to the Alternative Minimum Tax made permanent, something which eluded Republicans for decades, again under a Democrat president.

Passed at the very opening to 2013, the stock market boomed as a result, tax revenues recovered and the dollar soared from 80 to 95ish today, helping to tank oil prices, for which each and every American should be grateful everytime he fills the gas tank.

"Repeatedly failed"?

Utter nonsense.

The dollar has surged 2.26% since Wednesday to trade at 95 this morning

The dollar hasn't traded at 95 since late 2003.

Much more of this dollar strength is due to the continued improving fiscal condition of the United States since 2012 than people realize. 

Tax revenues are way up under the made-permanent Bush tax cuts and the made-permanent Alternative Minimum Tax fix, both of which heralded in 2013. Federal receipts are up a whopping combined 36% in 2013 and 2014 over 2012.

And continued Republican control of the purse in Congress has meant almost zero expansion of federal spending. Federal outlays are up a paltry combined less than 1% in 2013 and 2014 over 2012.

The federal government is up a net $845.5 billion in the last two years. That's huge.

The dollar is not simply a fiction which competes with other fictions in the global marketplace, but a symbol of the determination of the American people to play by the rules and pay their bills. It is not a coincidence that this determination lately expressed politically paved the way for falling commodity prices generally, and oil in particular. It is uncertainty which breeds fear-trades.

Speaker John Boehner doesn't get the credit he deserves for achieving under the Democrat President Barack Obama what Republicans before him could only dream about.

And if you want to know what's wrong with Republicans, that's it.

Stupid things heard on the Steve Gruber Show radio program last week

Both the AM drive-time host, Steve Gruber, a libertarian for whom every opponent is taken as a challenge to his manhood, and his weekly punching bag guest, Liberal Lee, last Tuesday agreed that the middle class in America is basically . . .  intact!

Which just proves that ideologues are impervious to the destruction which has been all around them and that libertarians and liberals drink from the same cup. Both camps are too heavily invested in the political gangs they support to say otherwise, for if the one did it would mean George Bush and Alan Greenspan would have to be blamed, and if the other, Barack Obama, Larry Summers and the rest of the Clinton re-treads which steered the economy through the latest depression to give you . . . nearly $90 billion in costs for over 500 failed banks, over 5 million homes lost to foreclosure, full-time jobs still 4 million below the 2007 peak seven years ago, ObamaCare's lies, higher costs, poorer coverage and limited networks, the deaths of Americans at Benghazi, IRS targeting of conservatives, the most imperial presidency in our history, 30 million prime working age people not working, a lawless executive, and 1.8% GDP, the worst in the post-war.

For his part, Gruber basically gave over a segment on his show every week this fall to the reelection campaign of Congressman Tim Walberg, a conventional Republican who normally votes with the majority of his caucus, but who did vote against making the Bush tax cuts permanent for the vast majority of Americans. Walberg notably just rewarded his radio benefactor who opposed Cromnibus with a vote for it, in keeping with his past voting record for sweeping spending bills which avoid the traditional appropriations process in order to take the politics out of spending the people's money. Hey, thanks Gruber.

The Steve Gruber Show is unfortunately heard on many small market radio stations during morning drive throughout Michigan, which through August 2014 was the top state for completed foreclosures among non-judicial states for the prior twelve month period. But the show's best rank is only #3 in the Lansing market according to dar.fm, and #31 in the mornings overall, here. The best thing that can be said for it is that the stations it is on are typically low-power, like its commentary. 

NY Times laments "tax uncertainty" over breaks which expired almost a year ago

As seen at Amazon

This is like lamenting that the Bush tax cuts became permanent two years ago. The only uncertainty is for liberals who still hope to repeal them. When pigs fly.

Here:

"Absent congressional action, a host of business and personal tax breaks expires on Jan. 1. ...

"Negotiators have all but given up culling the government’s growing list of temporary tax measures, making some permanent and jettisoning the most egregious tax giveaways. Instead, the House will vote Wednesday on a measure to restore almost all the tax breaks that expired last year for one year retroactively. That would allow taxpayers to claim them on their 2014 tax returns while forcing Congress to grapple with the issue again early next year."

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Ahem. There's nothing temporary about a tax break which was allowed to expire many months ago. If you've been counting on getting any expired tax break back, you deserve to be disappointed. If Congress decides to reinstate any of them before the end of the year, you've received a gift.

And while we're at it, the New York Times isn't very helpful about telling you what expired. Here's a list:

Health Coverage Tax Credit

Deduction for Charitable Donations from IRAs

Educator Expense Deduction

Nonbusiness Energy Property Credit

Tuition and Fees Deduction.

But the real whopper of this story is that we're supposed to believe that

"Uncertainty alone raised corporate bond prices, lowered growth by 0.3 percentage points a year and raised unemployment last year by 0.6 percentage points."

Investors in popular corporate bond index funds know the first statement completely misrepresents history. Net asset values of intermediates and shorts fell dramatically in the summer of 2013 after Ben Bernanke's ill-timed remarks. That prices have recovered since then masks the fact that prices today are still almost 3% lower for intermediates than they were when the Bush tax cuts became permanent at the beginning of 2013, and a half percent lower for shorts.

As for lowering growth, how anyone is supposed to believe that is beyond me. Government revenues have SOARED to record heights in fiscal 2013 as a result of permanency in the tax code, allowing a positive contribution to GDP from government consumption expenditures for the first time in four years. The 3Q2014 contribution was 0.76, most of that military spending on the war against ISIS, and the 2014 average to date is 0.31. The average contribution from government spending for 2011, 2012 and 2013? -0.45, a subtraction from growth.

Meanwhile unemployment has been falling, mostly as a result of not counting over 6 million unemployed Americans who have given up on finding a job. Adding them back in would take unemployment up from 5.8% to 9.6%, and the New York Times thinks it can detect a 0.6 point contribution from "uncertainty". We should be so lucky.

Carnage in Commodities: Gold/Oil Ratio soars to 18.08

Gold continues to lose ground to plunging oil prices, making oil the preferred investment of the two, if you had to chose between them. Gold would have to plunge to 987.60 to restore the ratio to parity of 15 at the current price of oil, 65.84, or 17%.

Gold is presently about 200 off its 2014 high of 1385 (London fix), about 14%, while West Texas Intermediate Crude is down over 35% from its June close at 102.07.

The surging dollar in 2014 has been deflationary for commodities. Closing as low as 79.09 in early May, .DXY closed yesterday at 89.36, up almost 13% in just seven months.

Behind that no doubt has been the Yellen Federal Reserve's commitment to end QE, which it did in October, and the continued Republican stranglehold on spendthrift liberalism, creating positive fiscal conditions liked by markets. Federal revenues are at an all time high of $2.775 trillion in fiscal 2013 while outlays remain stabilized at about $3.5 trillion for each of the last five fiscal years in a row. At $3.4 trillion in fiscal 2013, the often ugly dance between a Republican House and a Democrat Senate and Executive has meant that federal spending has risen only 2.75% in nominal terms for each fiscal year since the 2008 baseline. The S&P500 is up over 12% year-to-date on top of last year's stellar 32% gain.

The permanency of the Bush tax cuts and the AMT fix which heralded in the new year in 2013 continue to work their magic in combination with the stronger dollar and Washington gridlock, for which neither John Boehner nor Barack Obama will ever get their due.

What a country.

Total Market Capitalization To Nominal GDP Ratios, Selected Years

I have used the Wilshire 5000 level at year end multiplied by 1.2 as a proxy for total stock market capitalization (except where noted by the month), and the latest summer revisions for calendar nominal GDP, in summer 2014 for the period back to 1999, and in summer 2013 for the period back to 1971.

A ratio close to 1.0 indicates the market is fairly valued relative to GDP. A ratio less than 1.0 indicates the stock market is "on sale" to some extent (for example, a ratio of 0.48 indicates the market is trading at a 52% discount). A ratio of more than 1.0 indicates the stock market is expensive and may be considered overvalued for investment purposes (for example, a ratio of 1.72 indicates the stock market is as much as 72% too expensive).

1971   .975

1981   .480

1987   .595

1990   .622

1994   .745

1997 1.296

1999 1.715
2000 1.420
2001 1.209

2002   .912

2003 1.125
2004 1.170
2005 1.147

2006 1.234

2007 1.228

2008   .740

March 2009   .676

2009   .962

2010 1.071

2011 1.019

2012 1.113

2013 1.410

March 2014 1.407

June 2014    1.446

Historically considered, valuation of the stock market by the end of 2008 made then a much better investing opportunity than was late 2002 and early 2003, almost 20% better. And valuations have remained reasonable throughout 2010-2012 and only became expensive in 2013. The four year period beginning in late 2008 has been an excellent opportunity for those with cash to invest.

I maintain that a primary driver of conditions in 2013 was the midnight hour 2012/2013 resolution of tax uncertainty, in the form of making the Bush tax cuts and alternative minimum tax rates permanent, ending the tinkering with Social Security, and reaching a compromise on capital gains tax rates.

All hail John Boehner.

Hey Mark Levin! Who Got The Bush Tax Cuts Made Permanent Under A Democrat President?

John Boehner, you ingrate.

George Bush couldn't do that even with control of the House and Senate.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell Used To Be "The Law Of The Land" Too, But That Didn't Stop Democrats From Trying To Repeal It

Rich Lowry in The New York Post, here:

Having done the deed, Democrats now expect Republicans to salute smartly, accept “the law of the land” and suggest minor improvements that Democrats will, in their wisdom, decide whether or not to adopt. In other words, they recommend the acquiescence of surrender. If this were a consistent principle rather than opportunistic advice, Democrats would have been content to leave “don’t ask, don’t tell” in place and never would have agitated to repeal the Bush tax cuts, out of deference to duly constituted policy and law. ...

[T]he law suffers from basic design flaws beyond the question of whether the Obama administration can get its software to work. It depends on young, healthy people buying insurance even as it reduces their incentive to do so; it encourages employers to dump workers off their current insurance; it suppresses full-time work, through the employer mandate; in 10 years, the law still leaves 30 million people uninsured.

Barack Obama: Chester The Sequester Taxpayer Molester

According to The Des Moines Register here, Pres. Obama told two of its editors just two weeks before the 2012 election that he was COUNTING ON the sequestration cuts which he now says are going to hurt middle class Americans, and that he was COUNTING ON the expiration of the Bush tax rates, in tandem "to implode the partisan gridlock" referred to by his interlocutor at The Register (full transcript at the link), to which the following was part of the reply by the president:

"In the short term, the good news is that there’s going to be a forcing mechanism to deal with what is the central ideological argument in Washington right now, and that is: How much government do we have and how do we pay for it?

"So when you combine the Bush tax cuts expiring, the sequester in place, the commitment of both myself and my opponent -- at least Governor Romney claims that he wants to reduce the deficit -- but we’re going to be in a position where I believe in the first six months we are going to solve that big piece of business."

In other words, Obama said he was counting on the sequestration gambit and the expiration of the Bush tax rates gambit to accomplish his "balanced approach", which is tax rate increases combined with spending cuts "to reduce the deficit". Notice how he likes "force" especially when he can distance himself from it, and how that force can impose an ideological conclusion for which he otherwise is reticent to take responsibility. The man isn't really up to being the tyrant.

President Obama all along has wanted this sequestration event to occur, and any tax increase he could get along with it. The forced spending cut idea was his idea from the beginning according to Bob Woodward, but Obama could only welcome the forced expiration of the Bush tax rates idea. He's just sorry he was not the author of it. As it turned out, he got some tax increases on the rich in the year end tax deal ($60 billion annually), but more importantly he got the reset of the Social Security payroll tax ON EVERYBODY without so much as a shot being fired by anyone in Washington. The latter comes to about $100 billion annually. Add in a few spending cuts now on the backs of all these people he's been parading as victims, and Obama is as happy as a clam.

Yes, some of the American people are being actually molested by the president's policies, but they just don't know who the perp is because the creep can make himself invisible. Unfortunately for them, because they are mostly denizens of government, private sector Americans who have been living in greatly reduced circumstances for four years now because of Obama's on-going depression just aren't sympathetic to their plight.

The trouble is, neither is Obama.

Speaker Boehner Ripped Off Obama's Shirt. The Pants Are Next.

So says Ralph Benko, rightly, for Forbes, here, quoting Boehner and commenting:

"Who would have ever guessed that we could make 99% of the Bush tax cuts permanent? When we had a Republican House and Senate and a Republican in the White House, we couldn’t get that. And so, not bad."

“Not bad” is a resounding understatement. Dealt a weak hand, Boehner managed to 99% outfox, on tax policy, a president who had the massive apparatus of the executive branch, the Senate majority, and a left-leaning national elite media whooping it up for a whopping tax increase. Even more impressively, Boehner pulled it off with steady nerves while under heavy pressure from the anti-spending hawks in his own caucus.

Republicans and especially conservatives still don't appreciate the magnitude of Boehner's achievement, the most important part of which, as Benko says, will turn out to be the new baseline resulting from the permanent fix to the AMT. As The New York Times reported but nobody's talking about, wink wink, the permanent fix to the AMT is going to cost the feds $1.8 trillion over the next ten years. Well, guess who won't be paying that?! And Rush Limbaugh and other dunderheads are complaining that Republicans caved on the principle of tax increases. Methinks thou dost protest too much.

Lay down boys, take a little nap. It's 14 miles to the Cumberland Gap. 

Bush Tax Cuts Made Permanent, Obama Tax Cuts Expire, Payroll Tax Rockets 33%

And Rush Limbaugh says Obama won a "massive victory"?

It depends on your point of view, doesn't it? If you have a Republican bias, you think George Bush won, which he obviously did. The permanent adoption of Bush's tax cuts by the opposition is a vindication, which Rush somehow can't bring himself to crow about, let alone even acknowledge. If you have a Democratic bias, you think Obama won.

No wonder a caller just phoned in to tell Rush to stop campaigning for the Democrats. She rightly perceives Rush to be making a political mistake, to which Rush responds he's been the best campaigner against the Democrats for 25 years, but to no avail, by his own admission.

Has Rush Limbaugh been good for America? His own answer is No!

Maybe it's time for Rush to quit! 

NYT: Fiscal Cliff Deal Gave Obama Only "Small Victories"

The New York Times, here at CNBC.com, admits it: Obama's victories in the fiscal cliff deal were small.

"For President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress, the fiscal deal reached this week is full of small victories that further their largest policy aims. ... White House officials took the path they did because they feared that a hardened stance on the debt ceiling would result in no deal at all: taxes would have risen on nearly everyone; automatic spending cuts would have begun; jobless benefits would have ended for many; and markets may have reacted badly.

"In the chaos that could have followed, the officials believed, a grand bargain would have been unlikely. If anything, Democrats -- worried they would be blamed for the economy's troubles, as the party holding the White House -- might have struggled to get a deal as good as this week's. Having won this round, Democrats still have compromises to offer Republicans in the next one, like changes to Social Security."

In other words, the expiration of the Bush tax cuts was a gun pointed at Obama's already terrible economy. There was no way the Democrats were going to let that gun go off and ruin the second term of the most overrated president in history. The stock markets knew it for months, which is why they never tanked even as the expiration date passed.

Here's a newsflash for the readers of the NYT: this deal is as good as it's going to get, and Democrats lost big even on the tax hike on the rich because, despite raising taxes on estates and on high incomes, dividends and capital gains, the AMT fix is going to cost the Feds (read: offset the taxes paid by the rich) $1.8 trillion over ten years. The price of that to the rich was barely $600 billion over ten years for those other things, about which so-called conservatives doth protest too much. The rich aren't going to be getting any less rich at all.

And the Times boasts that the deal reduces economic inequality. In their dreams. What a joke.

If Democrats won anything, it's that the economy isn't going to tank immediately under their mismanagement, and that they have more time to take the credit for the successes the Republicans achieve.

Liberal Henry Blodget Agrees: Pres. Bush/Republicans Won Battle Of Fiscal Cliff

Liberal Henry Blodget of BusinessInsider fame writes for YahooFinance, reproduced here:

"Ever since the Bush Tax Cuts were first enacted in 2001, one goal of the Republican party has been to 'make the Bush Tax Cuts permanent.' ...

"The Republicans may not have gotten everything they wanted out of the Fiscal Cliff deal, but they got almost everything.

"And when it comes to the broader fiscal battle, the Republicans are winning: The federal government's tax revenues are at the lowest level as a percent of GDP in the past several decades.

"The Republicans, in other words, are well on their way to starving the beast."