back to article Obama drops Twitter bombs on debt-ceiling foes

The US debt-ceiling legislative dogfight ratcheted up a notch on Friday morning when President Obama's campaign staff launched a Twitter-bombing run on US legislators. Shortly after Obama made a short statement in which he urged Americans to "make a phone call, send an email, tweet; keep the pressure on Washington," @ …

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  1. Old Painless
    Mushroom

    Why bother?

    Tweeting? He could ask some of his nastier departments to arrange accidents for the Tea Party;or maybe disappear a few "pour encourager les autres". Whats the point of being President if you don't get to press the Special Forces button now and again? Lame! Use a big stick Obama, we'd all understand! They're nutters!

    1. Dave Turner
      FAIL

      Really?

      That kind of thing worked so well for Nixon didn't it. Although if it would get that incompetent fool to resign and we could get an adult in the White House, from either party - if there are any, then hell yes go for it.

      1. CyberCod
        Flame

        For real?

        If there's any failings on Obama's fault, its that he gives in to right-wing idiocracy. Take your blind hatred back to Fox News forum. This is an intelligent man's website, you clearly do not belong.

        1. BillG
          FAIL

          For Real Leadership???

          Where is Obama's leadership? Last week Gallop has his approval rating at only 40%. His own party won't listen to him. He's been frozen out of the budget talks by Pelosi who won't even let him into the room.

          It's sad that Obama has to tweet like a teenager desperate for attention.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Or even worse!

      They could unfriend them on Facebook *gasp*

    3. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Devil

      I'm sure sarcasm tags are missing

      You know you can't sic the Predators on the Tea Parties - they are all busy grilling random sand denizens.

      "We do Oslo several times a week and no-one notices. That's hardcore!"

  2. Eddy Ito
    Pint

    Happy Birthday

    Voters asked for gridlock and got it, how nice. Want some cake?

    Now if only there was a way to stop the Fed from doing something stupid like shooting the QE3 bullet. We've already run out of feet and smarter nations like Cambodia are pushing the dollar aside. The debt ceiling won't matter much when folks start saying things like, "Sure we can float you some cash but only if you pay us back in Yen".

    Better grab some pretzels and a beer quick; the fun's about to start.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    No compromise!

    Stop wasting our money. Get out of all the sand countries. Stop giving our money away to lazy people and corporations! We already get taxed too much and if you tax the rich, they'll just hide their money... If you just try to fix this with taxes we'll never get out of this hole. The federal government is looking more and more like California all the time, and that is not a compliment.

    The Tea Party folks are single issue and in the past I would of thought that a single issue group was naive. It is now time to stop growing the government and make people be more responsible for themselves.

    1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
      Coffee/keyboard

      taxed too much?

      Come over to the Netherlands, or most European countries. We seem to pay rather more.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Numbers

      Yes, those "lazy people" are such a burden. You know the elderly that receive Social Security? Which by the way accounts for more of the budget than all of the other income security provisions combined. Oh and by the way if you look at the data you'll see those provisions are already on a downward trend.

      http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2012/assets/hist08z5.xls

      Here's your U.S. income tax rate data since 1913. Good thing you weren't in the workforce in the early 80's huh!

      http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html

      If it's any consolation, I do agree that the multiple wars are a disaster and that income from corporate taxes is pitifully low.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Way too many

      There are way too many countries that we give money too that hates us. Time to cut the aid, time for the UN to find other funding as well. Korea, time to start ponying up money for OUR military services. If not, I'm sure NK will provide theirs for free, they'll be right over to show you their capabilities.

      1. DavCrav

        Hmm

        "There are way too many countries that we give money too that hates us. Time to cut the aid, time for the UN to find other funding as well."

        US foreign aid is already close to the lowest from any developed country, at about 1% of the budget. The US budget is something like $3.5tn, and you will save about $40bn. Oh, and kick-start some lovely new world poverty and associated wars/terrorism.

        But you've saved $40bn/year. What about the other $1.5tn/year defecit?

        (By comparison, the UK is committed to spending 0.7% of GDP on foreign aid by 2013. The US currently spends about 0.3% of GDP on foreign aid.)

      2. Ed Deckard
        Stop

        Foreign Aid

        Let's clear up a couple of common misconceptions.

        Foreign aid as practiced by the USA is not a free gift. Most often it's an incentive for a foreign government. You may question the morality of handing tens of millions of dollars worth of aid a year to the Kingdom of Randomistan or the Republica Bananera Centroamericana in exchange for their cooperation in the War on Terror/War on Drugs but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than invading and occupying.

        (Me, I'm all for ending the Wars on Nouns but that's beside the point).

        Foreign aid as practiced by the USA is not a cash reward. It's (usually) more in the nature of store credit: "We'll give you $200 million worth of credit but you can only buy items we approve from suppliers we approve at prices they set." A lot of the time the purchases are actually carried out by the US Gov't itself and the goods simply delivered, for example in rearming the Afghan security forces. Effectively it's a subsidy of US industry.

        Much of the time, foreign aid as practiced by the USA is not a gift at all. It's simply a low-interest loan. And when the Friendly Tyrant of an Unfriendly Country gets overthrown, guess who gets to pay for the bullets said Friendly Tyrant has been putting in the Unfriendly Natives all these years?

        So, yeah, by all means USA should cut foreign aid. After all, it's not like it buys the USA influence way out of proportion to expenditure AND appeases the dirty longhair libruls, right?

        Right?

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Devil

      Typical american - does not know his own nation history

      In the days when America had a balanced budget americans were taxed _MUCH_ _MORE_ especially in the higher earner bracket.

      What America is seing now is the result of the final convulsions of Reaganomics. Reagan cut those taxes to produce a rather unnatural, premature and forced exit from the 70-es recession. He however did not cut the spending far enough to match. In fact there was no chance in hell he could cut it without USA stopping to function as a country (even if we ignore the rather astronomical bill for the operation "Bankrupt the commies" AKA the first Afghanistan War).

      The situation has not changed much since. The USA as a country has still the same liabilities - police, judiciary, etc, their pensions, their benefits, their salaries. Compared to that the military budget is A) small change, B) can be considered as an economical aid package to selected states.

      It does not matter how much will be cut from Medicaid or medicare and how many small wars will be stopped. That does not change the fundamental problem which all presidents in the last 20+ years have inherited from Reagan. The removal of taxation from both corporations and high earners have made the pot so imbalanced that there is no chance in hell for it to be balanced and there are much bigger "basic state functionality" bills than either one of these small programs.

      Not understanding this (and not knowing where it all started) means that you need to check your brain examined - it may be matching Reagan mental faculties (or it may be naturally on the same level).

      Any way, not that we over here will not have to eat the sam sh*** from a rather unsuccessful bout of mini-Reaganomics known as Brownomics.

      1. Eddy Ito

        Re: Typical american - does not know his own nation history

        "... (even if we ignore the rather astronomical bill for the operation "Bankrupt the commies" AKA the first Afghanistan War)."

        I assume you want to ignore it because it was mostly run by a Democrat by the name of Charlie Wilson so you can't pin those costs on Reagan?

        "does not change the fundamental problem which all presidents in the last 20+ years have inherited from Reagan"

        IIRC, Bill Clinton had a surplus going for a bit there. Should I mention that the average tax rate under Clinton was almost 2% lower than the average rate under Reagan or that for Obama it's about 6% below Reagan's?

        That said, I take your point the giant ballooning of federal spending can mostly be attributed to Reagan but it isn't like any President since has even tried to pull back because now a spending cut means they are only going to spend 6% more than the rate of inflation instead of spending 8% more.

    5. Naughtyhorse
      FAIL

      people be more responsible for themselves

      I think the tea parties nutter in cheif palin, would take issue with that if the MASSIVE subsidies given to deadbeat states like alasks were to go away!

    6. CyberCod
      Flame

      Moron

      The rich already hide their money. They're making more than they ever have, yet it does not result in more jobs, just a richer upper class. Stop regurgitating O'reilly's talk-points, that guy is a moron and so are you if you believe anything he says. You would assuredly vote for your own execution if the republicans told you that living was for socialists. Stop being a sheep and look at the bigger picture. A higher percentage of GDP is going to corporate shareholders than at any other time in history, and taxes are lower than they've been in decades. How can they create jobs, if there's nobody in this country that can afford to use the services they offer. The economy is top-heavy, you idiots have BEEN getting your tax breaks for years, yet you still cry for more. Does it fix anything? Nope. Stop letting Hannity and crew do your thinking for you and start thinking for yourself.

    7. Martin Smith 2

      Interesting article on the origins of the tea party

      http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/25/tea-party-koch-brothers

  4. Scott 1

    Bipartisan

    Bipartisan = "Do everything my way.". Note: if you hot in on the Republican plan, it would be a bipartisan effort.

    1. DavCrav

      Republican plan

      What is the Republican plan? Save $900bn from the budget, cutting health and social security. Increase debt ceiling by $900bn, planting the next row in the run up to the election.

      Name one single way in which this is bipartisan. Go on.

      1. Tom 13

        Well, unlike the most recent plan to exit the House,

        it had 22 Democrats and all Republicans supporting it. As opposed to say Reid's plan which can't even seen to garner all his Dems for support.

        I'm all for cutting about 2.7 trillion from the current baseline, but Dems don't seem to want to support that, so 900bn seems a compromise.

  5. frobnicate

    Forth to the past

    And I thought Spengler gave us at least another century before the West falls to that hue and cry style of populism. Incidentally, "Gen. Petraeus" sounds powerfully Roman.

    1. Peter Murphy
      FAIL

      The United States ain't the "West", buddy.

      The "West" also includes the rest of the Americas (more or less) most of Europe, and ex-Dominions in Oceania.

      Some parts of the "West" aren't doing so well. Others are. Norway, despite its problems with Brievik, is at the top of the league in HDI. Australia comes second. Just because the US is in a bind does give you an excuse to say the "West" is in decline.

  6. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Big Brother

    The new tweet symbol

    The chicken born in 1913, finally coming home to roost.

  7. Doug Glass
    Go

    And ...

    .., as of late 07/29/11 a net 40,000 followers have left the fold.

  8. Off A Cough
    FAIL

    What an arse

    Jimmy Carter competence, Richard Nixon narcissism. And now a spammer.

    He has no plan of his own, and his party filibusters their own bill in the Senate. His 2006 speech as Senator when the debt limit was raised does not match his actions today.

    The man's approval ratings are in the toilet and will remain there. He never was a master of technology, he was only a master of marketing. Now he realizes there is no way to advertise his product that anyone can stomach, and that's only one of the things he has in common with a douche.

    1. Chris 244
      FAIL

      White House budget plan

      Google search "white house budget plan" first result:

      http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Overview/

      Covers all federal departments, 216 detailed pages. Admittedly I couldn't be bothered to read it either. Then again I'm Canadian. What's your excuse?

      1. Tom 13

        Figures. You need to Google the proper terms to get a valid result:

        "White House Debt Reduction Plan" or possibly "White House debt ceiling plan". Neither of those produce links pointing to any actual plan. Which is rather the point which is starting to be made by reporters, and which seems to get James "pants on fire" Carney's knickers in a twist.

        As for the document you found, it's part of the reason we're in the current mess. The other of course being that for the 2 years of 100% Dem control, there were neither budgets, nor increases in the debt ceiling. They could have done it then and avoided the mess now. Of course, that would have let the tax and spend cat out of the bag.

    2. CyberCod
      Mushroom

      Ipso Facto Dipshitso

      His approval ratings are in the toilet because the racist right-wing bible-thumping bigots hate him on principle, and the left wing party things he doesn't stand up to those jackasses nearly enough.

      The Republicans are going to screw this country hardcore like some sort of bukake scene, and then blame the aftermath on him. Then they'll get back in the driver's seat and drive this country right off a cliff.

  9. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    @Hmm

    You forget - to the USA, the cost of invading your country counts as aid to your country.

  10. Aichikenmin
    Flame

    For all you "Tea Party" supporters

    Why don't you try this easy home experiment?

    1.) After building up a solid credit rating, start racking up a ton of purchases on your credit card of choice.

    2.) Refuse to pay the balance once the amount of debt has gotten too high, claiming you need to reduce your future expenditures first.

    3.) Work on reducing your future expenditures while refusing to pay that debt, leading to your credit score , as well as your financial standing, going down the gutter.

    The Tea Party sees this as a viable solution to the problem. Do you?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Home Experiment...

      Poor interpretation, Aichikenmin.

      More accurate experiment:

      1.) as above - build solid credit rating, rack up a ton of debt

      2.) realise you are living above your means

      3.) plan a budget that will slowly but surely restore the sustainability of your finances

      4.) ask your bank nicely for the financing to implement your plan.

      ... it will probably work out ok.

      Or try this one (the Obama/Democrat approach):

      1.) as above - build solid credit rating, rack up a ton of debt

      2.) once you are struggling to repay your debt, ask the bank for even more credit to pay off your existing debt and to maintain or improve your lifestyle.

      3.) blame the bank when your pitchfork-wielding creditors knock on the door

      ... result?

      1. Galidron

        @AC

        The first was more accurate. The spending budget was already approved which means all this has been about refusing to pay for the that has been racked up and nothing to do with your option 3.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Republifail/Teatard Express

    I don't know what he thinks that's going to do. The Republicans just want the US to fail because that will be pinned on Obama. And then the second they get in, they'll cut taxes again, damage protections for those that need them and the country will be in even worse shape, but that's ok, because they didn't have Obama/Carter. and who knows, thanks to his sexual indiscretions, Clinton will be the next Kennedy, an honorary Republican.

  12. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Holmes

    Even Moody's starts to smell the coffee

    http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/801-economy/174447-moodys-neither-plan-protects-the-nations-aaa-rating

  13. PyLETS
    Thumb Up

    it's called politics, get used to it

    Since when was asking constituents to talk to their representatives spamming ? Because the person suggesting this course of action is the President of the US ? Twits who tweet can follow and respond to whoever they like, I can't be bothered myself and simply blacklist those who send me unsolicited bulk email so it stays out of my inbox. Managing a large correspondence is part of the job of any representative in any democracy, especially at a time of crisis.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    I take it

    I take it that most of you are not great fans of President Obama's?

    I thought he was an OK bloke!

    Troll, well, lets she how hard it is....

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Childcatcher

    Big plans LOL

    Sweet Lord. Bunch of Brits commenting on American politics is always funny.

    The GOP wants to eliminate big government.Their theory is this : Big government dont work.

    To prove their point and stand nice with their rich contributors , they block every piece of legislation that could help the People. So , they break something in order to tell us " look .. it aint working "

    And the suckers keep electing them.Says a lot about the average IQ of the average American.

    1. Gary B.

      What title?

      Who says that everyone responding here is British? Besides, when you're in the forest you sometimes can't see it for what it is, and having an outside opinion is helpful.

      And yes, the average IQ of the average American is astonishingly low, and seems to be getting lower too (teaching "Intelligent Design" because evolution is "just a theory", "trickle-down economics", etc). Unfortunately, not enough of the sane people contact their representatives, and the news media spews their completely-biased opinions as fact, and the sheeple who don't know enough take it as fact.

      The tea-party backed republicans are going to be the death of this nation if it keeps up. The rest of the republicans don't seem to know which way to go, and their "no compromise" stance is the total opposite of what this nation was founded on. But the democrats don't get away for free either with many of their Big Spending plans (though at least they've been willing to compromise).

      1. Galidron
        Trollface

        Big Goverment

        Hmm

        Democrat Big Government is bad because it helps poor people live until they can get that second job the need.

        Republican Big Government good because it mostly just takes away our freedoms.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    @Doug Glass : 07/29/11 ?

    The 7th of when ???

  17. 404
    Childcatcher

    Nope - not with a ten foot pole

    Touching this, I mean.

    ;)

  18. IceMage
    Trollface

    Not really bipartisan

    It's not really bipartisan if all the republicans are against it is it?

  19. Old Painless
    Pirate

    It just isn't cricket...

    .. to accelerate, deify and pornographically chase obscene, unfettered capitalism;let it fuck up; give it a shit load of money to pay itself back;let it fuck up again; and then shout "Look, the black guy broke it!" What a bunch of bastards!

    Didn't that George W bloke raise the debt ceiling SEVEN TIMES, whilst simultaneously wasting 3 trillion dollars trying to break the US Army on Iraq?And that is just the money - forget the thousands and thousands of DEAD PEOPLE..

    And another thing while I'm at it, and getting annoyed -why does the US working class so happily collaborate in its own enslavement by foaming at the mouth whenever someone mentions "socialism"? What - you'd rather doff your caps to the big money nobs while they are screwing you out of every penny you own?Why isn't there a labour movement in America?Its second only to China for worker mistreatment and abuse!

    Well, that should invite a few fair and balanced replies anyway..

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