{"id":9566,"date":"2012-11-22T08:30:18","date_gmt":"2012-11-22T16:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=9566"},"modified":"2012-11-22T08:30:18","modified_gmt":"2012-11-22T16:30:18","slug":"if-youre-dining-with-republicans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/22\/if-youre-dining-with-republicans\/","title":{"rendered":"If You’re Dining with Republicans"},"content":{"rendered":"

You can pick your friends, but you are stuck with your family.  For that reason, many of you will have the \u2026um\u2026 pleasure of dining with Republicans today, thus soiling your festivities with InsaniTEA.  To help you, I found an excellent article with five items you can employ in the hope of shocking them back into the real world.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"22ThreeYrDeficit\"<\/p>\n

…This year, you have to have a little sympathy for your Republican family members. Not only did they lose, they lost after nominating a guy they never liked because they thought he could win. For this reason they\u2019ll be extra agitated and prone to ranting.<\/p>\n

The best advice is probably to avoid talking politics until at least dessert\u2014if at all possible. Then if you get seriously annoyed, you can make a clean escape without upsetting grandma. But if your right-wing relatives want to treat you like Colmes to their Hannity and demand a debate, you should be armed with a few facts that will at least get them thinking.<\/p>\n

1. In the past three years, the deficit has fallen faster than in any three-year stretch since World War II.<\/h6>\n

Republicans do a nice job of scaring people about the deficit. But they\u2019re in denial of a few basic facts. The deficit President Obama inherited was over $1 trillion\u2014entirely the result of President Bush\u2019s policies combined with the cost of the wars and the bad economy. Yes, President Obama continued the Afghanistan War and temporarily extended the Bush tax cuts for the rich\u2014two of the only Obama policies the Republicans endorsed. Still, the deficit is shrinking fast<\/a>. \u201cFrom fiscal 2009 to fiscal 2012, the deficit shrank 3.1 percentage points, from 10.1 percent to 7 percent of GDP,\u201d according to Investors\u2019 Business Daily.<\/p>\n

2. The U.S. recovery has been one of the best in the world.<\/h5>\n

Since the financial crisis began on Wall Street and spread across the globe, America\u2019s recovery has been frustrating but it is still the \u201csole bright spot of the world<\/a>.\u201d Meanwhile, Europe has fallen into recession after dramatic spending cuts made worse by the uncertainty of their weak monetary union. Individual states united by a common currency making their own decisions, along with huge spending cuts, sounds exactly like the Republican agenda. Aren\u2019t you glad we didn\u2019t go along with that?…<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <The National Memo<\/a>><\/p>\n

Photo credit: Maddow Blog<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n

I said five and there are only two there.  The other three are an excellent reason to click through to the original article.  I assure you, it\u2019s worth the effort.<\/font><\/p>\n

If you are unable to impress your Republican relatives with the truth of why they lost, don\u2019t blame yourself.  In some cases, you might as well be talking to a wall.  You can at least enjoy the squirming as they contemplate their prospects for the future.<\/font><\/p>\n

2016 Maybe?<\/font><\/h1>\n

\"palin_bachmann\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You can pick your friends, but you are stuck with your family.  For that reason, many of you will have the \u2026um\u2026 pleasure of dining with Republicans today, thus soiling your festivities with InsaniTEA.  To help you, I found an excellent article with five items you can employ in the hope of shocking them back […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}