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.

You've been had: The 2009 stimulus has been repeated every year, accounting for all GDP increases under Obama and then some

The February 2009 Obama stimulus got added to Bush's 2009 fiscal year spending because Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate at the time. It was scandalous, but there was nothing Republicans could do about it.

But the same thing happened every year thereafter because the Democrat Congress and then the Republican Congress deliberately passed this prior spending in the form of continuing resolutions instead of through regular order, which meant nothing got debated and the status quo was maintained. That's the evil of CRs.

Both parties did this on purpose instead of debating individual spending bills because . . . THEY ALL LOVE HAVING THE MONEY TO SPEND.

The fiscal 2008 baseline outlays were $2.9825 trillion, to which the stimulus got added for fiscal 2009, and just kept getting added and re-added and re-added right through to the present (and then some) through the continuing resolution process:

2009: $535.2 billion ($3.5 trillion)

2010: $474.6 billion ($3.5 trillion)

2011: $620.6 billion ($3.6 trillion)

2012: $554.5 billion ($3.5 trillion)

2013: $472.1 billion ($3.5 trillion)

2014: $523.6 billion ($3.5 trillion)

2015: $776.1 billion ($3.8 trillion)

2016: $1.017 trillion ($4.0 trillion).

The giant joke on the American people here is that Republicans went right along with this charade the whole time Obama was president, even after they got control of both the House and the Senate in 2014. Almost $5 trillion in "stimulus" has already been spent.

And Trump wants to add another $1 trillion?

Meanwhile under Obama current dollar GDP increased . . . $4.1 trillion. All government spending. All totally phony. And overpriced at that: $1.21 spent for every dollar of that fake GDP.

Congress has abdicated its spending oversight responsibilities for 20 years, and just did so again

From the story here:

Both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) have repeatedly promised a return to regular order instead of relying on take-it-or-leave-it omnibus bills and short-term CRs to fund the federal government. However, they have not kept that promise. On Thursday, the House passed a $1.1 trillion short-term CR (HR 2028) to keep the federal government operating until April 28, 2017. Lankford said Thursday that he will vote against the CR when it gets to the Senate on Friday. Despite some gains made since 2014, when Republicans took over control of the Senate, Lankford pointed out that Congress has been “missing out on real oversight” by passing supposedly temporary CRs for the past 20 years.

What a hypocritical gasbag Rush Limbaugh is about Trump's spending plans

Why, Donald Trump could be another FDR!, he says today. He could consolidate Republican rule for decades if he spends the money correctly!

Rush doesn't have a clue about the Obama stimulus, let alone have any principles. He thinks the stimulus was $1 trillion or so, when it was actually nearly $5 trillion, so far. I say so far because the damn thing was built into the outlay train. And look what we've gotten for it. A big fat nothing-burger. Crummier economic growth than under Bush, full-time jobs over 6 million behind trend, and a big fat national debt of nearly $20 trillion.

But Trump's version is going to be successful! Sure it is. $1 trillion or $5 trillion or $10 trillion under Trump isn't going to do anything it couldn't do under Obama.

The February 2009 Obama stimulus got added to Bush's 2009 fiscal year spending, and to every frickin' year thereafter. The fiscal 2008 baseline outlays were $2.9825 trillion.

And here are the annual outlays thereafter in excess of that baseline:

2009: $535.2 billion

2010: $474.6 billion

2011: $620.6 billion

2012: $554.5 billion

2013: $472.1 billion

2014: $523.6 billion

2015: $776.1 billion

2016: $1.017 trillion.

The giant joke on the American people here is that Republicans went right along with this charade the whole time Obama was president.

And now that Trump is running the show, an even bigger joke is about to be played on the American people.

Steve Gruber was a boor to Nicole Gelinas this morning

They had an argument over Gelinas' thesis that Trump's fiscal policies are stimulative like Obama's and will dramatically widen deficits without spending cuts.

When Gruber gave her the last 20 seconds he talked over her response instead.

Bad form old boy.

Speaker Ryan is still disgraceful, small and weak, still tiptoes up to "regular order" instead of demanding it

And the opposition can smell the weakness.

The job of Speaker is much too big for little Paul Ryan, who appears to have not one single fight in him.

From the story here in Roll Call:

Minibuses would break up the 12 individual spending bills into a few small packages rather than lump them into a single omnibus bill. Ryan has argued that passing minibuses is closer to regular order and would make the appropriations process more digestible. But he's privately acknowledged that such a strategy would likely result in some bills not getting done, leaving the agencies covered by the unfinished measures in need of a continuing resolution to extend funding through the remainder of the fiscal year.

Paul Ryan mistakenly thinks Donald Trump exists to serve Congress' agenda when it's the other way around

Big spending establishment Speaker Paul Ryan voted for Cromnibus

Here:

House Republicans are helping shape that Republican vision by offering a bold policy agenda, by offering a better way ahead. Donald Trump can help us make it a reality.

If Americans wanted Congress' agenda the Congress would have a higher approval rating than 18%.

Trump's rating by contrast is 33% in May. 

Sleeping with the enemy for 23 years, Bush cheerleader Mary Matalin switches to Libertarian Party

Quoted here:

"I'm not a Republican for a party or a person," she explained, adding she pledged party loyalty in more of a "Jeffersonian, Madisonian sense." For her, the Libertarian Party "continues to represent those constitutional principles that I agree with." Matalin, who served as the campaign director for Bush No. 41 and as an assistant to Bush No. 43, swears her latest move isn't because of Donald Trump's ascension in the GOP, noting that so far she likes what she sees. 

Elsewhere she tried to explain:

“I didn’t leave it, it left me,” she added. “When we had a standard-bearer with impeccable credentials in Ted Cruz and he’s loathed by the party leaders and he’s called a ‘wacko bird’ by the party leaders, where does that leave us? They left us!” 

Evidently this is about the complete absence of any Republican commitment to reign in the size and scope of the federal government, but why doesn't she just come out and say so if that's what this is about? You know, like maybe mention Obamacare and Cromnibus?

That said, government got pretty big and intrusive under her pals George Herbert Walker Bush and his son George W. Bush when they were presidents. Hate speech legislation, Americans with Disabilities Act, savings and loan bailouts, drugs for seniors, TARP, et cetera. Where was the libertarian outrage then, huh?

At least we know she can't stand the John McCain, Lindsey Graham wing of the Republican Party.

Dumb shit Senate absentee Marco Rubio doesn't realize decades-old oil export ban was already rescinded last December

Noted here:

Rubio told supporters he would lift the ban as president at a private fundraiser in Texas Friday, and his campaign website has an entire page devoted to the need to lift the ban. “I would also allow American oil producers to be able to export,” Rubio said, when asked what he would do about poor oil prices as president. “Right now we’re not allowed to export.”

Congress lifted the ban in December as part of the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill it passed. “Oil companies rush to exploit end of U.S. crude export ban,” reported Reuters in the wake of the vote that ended a 40-year ban on crude oil exports. ...

Rubio missed the omnibus vote, opting to campaign for president instead. He later chalked up his absence to a vote against a bill full of “garbage.” “The outcome is already predetermined,” he told Greta Van Susteren on Fox News in December.

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

Rubio is so out of touch he doesn't even realize Republicans gave away the store just to get the export ban lifted.