Serf's Up
by digby
What kind of people would look at this and say that unemployment insurance is "spoiling" people:
What kind of people? Well, Republicans to be specific, 38 out of 40 of whom voted against extending unemployment benefits. And then there was Ben Nelson, the one so-called Democrat who crossed the line leaving it one vote short. He'll go down in history as a profile in perfidy.
What a beautiful message of unity on our Independence Day it is to tell close to 20 million citizens that they are on their own in the worst job market since the Great Depression purely to make a cheap political point. It would make King George proud to see his aristocratic heirs flexing their muscles two centuries later in the country that once proudly proclaimed that it didn't have a class system.
Update: Oh, and also --- is this is true, President Obama should fire his fucking political team:
While President Bill Clinton’s political advisers favored more spending and tax cuts coming out of the recession of the early 1990s and his economic team pushed to start reducing deficits, in President Obama’s circle the opposite is true. Political advisers are channeling the widespread public anger at deficits while the economic team argues that the government should further spur the economy to avert another recession.
In Mr. Clinton’s day, the economic team, asserting that a credible commitment to fiscal responsibility would reassure financial markets and lead to greater long-term growth, won the argument in favor of deficit reduction, helped by moderate Democrats in Congress. These days, the Obama political team has the edge, again in the cause of emphasizing deficit reduction and with an assist from Congressional Democrats nervous about the midterm elections.
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