Mark Meckler Interview at Der Spiegel

See, "Interview with Tea Party Co-Founder Mark Meckler: 'We Have Compromised Our Way Into Disaster'":

SPIEGEL: The world is looking at Washington and sees gridlock and chaos. How much have the negotiations over the United States' debt ceiling hurt America's standing in the world?

Meckler: Saying that these debates have hurt our image is absurd. What you currently see in Washington is one of the most responsible debates ever about the size and scope of government. The world should look at what is going on in the United States as a model for what should happen in all countries.

SPIEGEL: We look at it and see a Congress held hostage by a small group of radical Tea Party members unwilling to agree to any budget compromise and risking a US default.

Meckler: What do you mean by "a small group?" Forty-one percent of voters in the last US election said they agreed with Tea Party values. And the primary values of the Tea Party are about fiscal responsibility.

SPIEGEL: But you are willing to accept a US default if your demands for massive budget cuts and no tax increases are not met. That seems rather irresponsible or even unpatriotic. Most leading economists forecast financial "Armageddon" in that case.

Meckler: Default is a false threat. We take in over $220 billion in revenues every month and our debt service is only roughly $20 billion. The only way we will default is if the President of the United States makes the irresponsible choice not to pay our debts. We Tea Party Patriots put principles first, and we have to understand what America is about. Our country was founded on an idea: liberty. But it requires fiscal responsibility for people to be free. We are becoming slaves to our own government. Every US family now owes $400,000 to $500,000 in national debt. We Tea Party Patriots fight for the future of the nation, and there can be nothing more patriotic than that.
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Boehner's Moment of Truth

From Kimberley Strassel, at WSJ:
It isn't easy to turn Washington around on a dime. If nothing else, give Republican House Speaker John Boehner marks for trying.

It wasn't a week ago that Mr. Boehner was plodding through White House deliberations, grasping for GOP support, facing the growing likelihood his party would be saddled with either a flawed debt bargain or blame for causing a default. By last night, Mr. Boehner was on the precipice of passing the only workable debt plan in town and shifting responsibility for further debt fallout across the aisle. Whatever the final result, Mr. Boehner's week-long struggle to pull his party behind him is worthy of some study ...
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Barbara Efraim with House Speaker John Boehner

Barbara Efraim, formerly of Long Beach City College, is doing an internship with the National Women's Committee of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington. She keeps me updated by Facebook. Here she's meeting with Speaker Boehner, who's in the news more than ever. A little blurry with the mobile phone, but cool:

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Barbara Efraim with House Speaker John Boehner

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Cathy McMorris Rodgers Was Robbed! — The Hill's '50 Most Beautiful People for 2011'

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers is Vice Chair of the House Republican Conference, and I just love her!

But she didn't make the cut at The Hill's annual roundup of 50 most beautiful people on Capitol Hill. That said, Freshman Rep. Kristi Noem makes the cut at #8, and who is Grace Johnson at #2? If I were single I'd be moving to D.C.!

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

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Gang of Six

At WSJ, "The Gang of Six Play: A conceptual breakthrough that has too few details."

Grand bipartisan budget deals are one of the great come-ons of Washington politics. They rarely work out, and when they do they usually benefit only the political class. The latest offer from the so-called Gang of Six Senators might be an exception, if—and this is a big if—its inviting generalities can be matched by useful details.

The budget outline—that's all it is so far—promises some $3.7 trillion in deficit reduction that includes rewriting the tax code, reforming entitlements, stabilizing the national debt, freezing domestic spending and rewriting federal budget rules—all in a handy seven pages of talking points. Senate committee chairmen would have wide latitude to write the new laws as they see fit. Anyone up for Max Baucus rewriting the tax code?

***
That said, the outline from the three Republicans (including Oklahoma conservative Tom Coburn) and three Democrats is different from most other such offers because it combines spending cuts with reform that would lower tax rates. Most Beltway budget deals combine immediate tax increases with the promise of future spending cuts that somehow never occur. They enhance Washington's claim on the nation's private resources. This deal has promise because it would reduce that claim.
Continue reading.

Also at NYT, "How ‘Gang of Six’ Revived Idea of Grand Debt Deal." And, "Bipartisan Plan for Budget Deal Buoys President."

And then, from James Capretta, at National Review, "The Gang of Six Disaster: The Worst Plan So Far,"In short, the Gang of Six has essentially offered a plan in which Republicans would hand over control of the budget process to Democratic senators and hope for the best. Enough said." And from Keith Hennessey, "Why I oppose the Gang of Six plan." (via Memeorandum).

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'We are taking steps to permanently armor our major public spaces'

Says Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Hawthorne, who reviews architectural proposals for the National Mall, commissioned by the National Capital Planning Commission, "Critic's Notebook: A design that's bold, restrained and secure."
... it's tough not to feel ambivalent about what the design competition represents in a larger sense for American urbanism as we approach the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. In cities all around the country — not just in New York and Washington — the temporary jersey barriers and other makeshift or ad hoc responses to the threat of terrorism are being replaced by subtler and better-looking but fixed design solutions. The new realities of terror protection are working themselves into the fabric of the American cityscape ...
RTWT.

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Adam Kokesh Body Slammed!

Awesome.

Too bad Medea Benjamin wasn't slammed as well.

See, "Jefferson Memorial Dance Arrests Poorly Handled":

Poorly handled by the demonstrators, that is ...

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Adam Kokesh Body Slammed!

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D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton: 'If these Republicans insist ... then we have got to make them pay the price'

That's right after she said "It’s time that the District of Columbia told the Congress to go straight to hell."


That's belligerent and threatening, more of the new tone progressives keep talking about, or something.


At Fox News, "D.C. Delegate Tells Congress to Go 'Straight to Hell' Over Budget Battle." And MyFox DC, "Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton Upset Over Treatment of DC During Shutdown Resolution Talks":

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D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton: 'If these Republicans insist ... then we have got to make them pay the price'

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GOP Threatens Shutdown Over Planned Parenthood

And I'm glad.

The New York Times is spinning the debate as a "non-budget" issue, but $75 million or $75 billion, it's public funding and more power to the Republicans calling out Dems on government-sponsored death to the unborn. And quoted there is former welfare recipient Patty Murray:
“I am really stunned, and I am angry as a woman,” said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, “that we have come to this after weeks of negotiating on numbers, where we have in principle an agreement on numbers, that there are those in the Republican Party in the House who are willing to shut down the government, take people’s paychecks away from them, because they want to deny women access to health care in this country.”
"Health care."
That's a nice rhetorical trick. Planned Parenthood is a death mill. Ground zero for the enormity of progressive pro-abortion evil. And leftists are manning (or womanning) the barricades on this one, since they know that abortion is to social policy as unions are to economics: Lose there and the Democrat-socialist-anti-life-coalition takes a knockout blow, with repercussions all the way up the electoral ladder (think President Barack "Infanticide" Obama).
Also, at Wall Street Journal, "Abortion Returns to Center Stage."

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ANSWER Coalition's Brian Becker: 'Violence Sometimes Is Necessary’

It's not that this stuff is surprising, but that the media is so ridiculously biased when it comes to reporting violent rhetoric.

The clip below is from The Blaze, "Dark Rhetoric: Nonviolence Is Not Always the Answer; American Socialist Leader Calling for Revolution Says ‘We Are Not Pacifists, Violence Sometimes Is Necessary’":


And check out this piece at New York Review, "We Don’t Know the Language We Don’t Know." It's a report on the March 19th White House protest against the wars. All the usual suspects were on hand, including Code Pink Obama money-bundler Jodi Evans. The "language" reference is to Daniel Ellsburg, who argues that Americans don't know Pashto, so we'll lose in Afghanistan. It's more complicated, but we'll hold off on that for another time. Anyway, ANSWER's Brian Becker was there, talking up a revolution right here at home:

Then Brian Becker of the Answer Coalition, a socialist group that sponsored some of the biggest peace demonstrations before the Iraq war, tore into the Libyan intervention, which had begun with the launch of a hundred cruise missiles that morning. “We have to learn the lessons that are so crystal clear, as Obama and the Pentagon and France and Britain prepare in the next few hours to start dropping bombs on the people of Libya in the name of democracy,” Becker said. “Let’s know this: Libya is the largest oil producer in Africa, and there’s no possible way that if the US goes into Libya that it’s ever going to come out.” Libya must be the masters of their own destiny, he continued. “We ourselves reject the idea, fed to us once again, that US imperialism, with all of its guns and bombs and missiles, is going to help an oppressed people. The only help we can give to the people of Libya and Egypt and Tunisia and Yemen is to make our own revolution right here!” (Whooping and cheering.)

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