I hope they planned for this all along. There was certainly a 50/50 chance this was going to happen.

I hear that Howie Mandell is going to do a new game show “No Deal is Better Than A Grand Bargain.”

Can you say Speaker Cantor?

I think you’re wrong.

The Senate will pass Obama’s last counter-offer including the chained CPI and permanent extension of tax cuts for those making $400,000 and all the other goodies for the top 2%.

The bill will go to the House where Pelosi will pass it with votes from corporatist Republicans.

Obama will sign it.

Democrats will own it going into 2014.

I was just watching the Ed Show and he and guest we’re chatting about how Chained CPI is no big deal, etc. I feel like I’m living in a bizzaro-world in which Democrats are fine with a significant Social Security cut in order to permanently extend tax cuts that overwheming benefit the top 2%. If that isn’t a bright Red Line, what is?

You left out the part where, in the interest of compromise,
O splits the difference between his $400,000 cutoff and Tanman’s $1,000,000,
making the cutoff at $700,000.
Which isn’t that much in Tribeca, you know.

Maddow & Co. are surprised. Even DDay is astonished. I’m not. Plan BS was just for show, with less production even than kabuki. There are three things the Republicans & Teabaggers know:

1)Obama and the Dems, except for a lonely progressive caucus, will capitulate.
2) The House of Representatives holds the budgetary power.
3) They have locked all the districts by Gerrymander.

They want it all, tax cuts & spending cuts for everything but military, and they don’t care if the country goes over the “fiscal cliff”. They will hold out through the coming recession until the Dems fold completely.

This is not chaos as Maddow posits. This is the coup.

Good grief. The Circus is in town and the clowns are showing up. Too funny.

I sort of agree. They(republicans) believe that Obama will come to them on bended knee, begging them to cut benefits for the old and sick. And they’re probably right. Everything’s on the table except wildly out of control Defense (isn’t that a laugh) spending.

Right. Just to show the Villagers that he went the extra, extra, extra mile to reach a compromise–even after his opponent bailed, giving him the perfect excuse to withdraw his overly-generous offer.

He should drop both Chained CPI and the tax cuts on income between $250,000-$400,000. The changes cancel each other out so the bill costs the same. Dare Boehner to deny it a vote. If he doesn’t blink, let the fiscal cliff happen and come right back with the same offer in January. He will blink eventually.

Obama and Nancy Pelosi, showed us how clueless they are about the current political landscape?

“There is simply no negotiating partner on the other side, which has given way to crazy. It’s an impasse.” David Dayen

Obama wasted political capital talking about CPI! and Nancy looks like an IDIOT!

Boehner is not in charge of anything!

most GOP house members know they will win in 2014, if they never vote for tax increases or support OBAMA, due to extreme gerrymandering.

most Dems house members know they win in 2014, if they never vote to cut Social Security! because GOP gerrymandering made Dem districts 90% Dem.

Obama must keep in mind he does not have to run for office again? this does not apply to house Dems and Reps who districts are very safe as long as they stay away from 3rd rail issues.

Citizens United is making the political powers in DC irrelevant!

GOP house members laughed at Boehner? I think they will ignore and laugh at OBAMA!

Is Nancy going to ask Dems to die for Obama social security cuts? why would they? they don’t have the votes to pass anything!

no GOP house member would follow Nancy Pelosi, following Nancy = un-employment line for GOP house members.

Catfood: It’s what’s for DINNER!

This very well may be just part of the show … boehner being unable to get any tax increases through the house … an act that leads to obama compromising further to save the country from the fiscal cliff (that he so eagerly helped manufacture) by throwing the old, disabled and poor down an additional flight of steps. If it’s not, the only thing preventing ss cuts are the principles of the tea partiers. Lord knows, they must be getting a lot of corporate carrots and sticks thrown at them.

Z

Boehner led w/ Serenity prayer, told his members “I don’t have the votes” 3 times and was “emotional” according to lawmakers in the room.— @DaviSusan via Twitter for iPhone

Tick. Tick. Tick. T-11 days.

Speaker Cantor or will some dark horse candidate for Speaker (Louis Goehmert? Darrell Issa?) magically appear come January? Won’t know until the new folks arrive.

But Boehner (or someone from the House) has to appear to still be negotiating with the President (or Democrats or someone).

Looking more and more like 8% cuts across the board for discretionary spending and 9% cuts across the board for military spending other than military pay and benefits. And a end to all Bush tax cuts.

Senate is gone until the December 27.

Time to occupy Congress so they don’t trade our futures away.

I think that’s the only real question here: Will they keep Boehner for cover, or put in Cantor or Issa to throw down the gauntlet once things have gone cliffside.

I must quote Frank Zappa. “Politics is the entertainment branch of the military industrial complex.”
Help us Zappadamus, you’re our only hope.

My Rep’s idiot kid answering the phone (sorry idiot kid but…) told me that $400,000 isn’t that much money.

How is almost 10x the median income in this country not that much money????????

On point 3, I wouldn’t be so confident if I were a Republican.

Even with a gerrymandered district you risk the wrath of voters if you decimate programs that 80% of the public favor keeping intact.

I think bmull’s scenario is the most likely. The GOP manage to convince the Democrats to shoulder the “credit” for the dirty work.

This wouldn’t be happening with President St. Jill Stein.

I wouldn’t place too much importance on boehner’s emotional displays. The dude can cry on a dime and he thoroughly enjoys the acting part of his job. He thinks he’s ray liotta or something and he wears about as much make-up as an actor. Hell, look at the photo with this article – he’s wearing eye liner.

Z

Meanwhile, in the world of the eternally spineless, the cheerleaders at “The People’s View,” about as badly misnomered a site as can be imagined, is rallying the troops with:

“Dear Liberals, Chained CPI is NOT a “Cut” to Social Security. Get Over It.”, http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2012/12/dear-liberals-chained-cpi-is-not-cut-to.html

If there’s one hallmark of a conservative, it’s arrogance.

No. She’d be in jail somewhere for chaining herself to a tree.

Ready, you can’t even buy your own personal jet for that much money and don’t even get me started on supporting the staff for a vacation home/s

Meanwhile the rest of people making $80,000 a year teaching are supposedly “overpaid” in bizarro Republican land where asking CEOs making 6 figure to pay more is cruel but cutting the pay of public school teachers is “fiscally ‘responsible.”

I miss Zappa. And Molly. They could put this in perspective.

Better a chained tree than a chained CPI.

Let’s hear it for pragmatism though. Woohoo!

And douchebaggery.

Let’s hear it for the fantasy of Romney being there, telling Congress to be more conservative before they bring these liberal proposals to him. w00t!

I’m pretty sure Pelosi and Friends are going to prove the hallmark of progressivism is idiocy though. So I guess for conservatives there is that.

I’ve learned to never underestimate the Democratic Party’s ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Yes, I lost my head for a moment. It isn’t that much money for the top 2%.

$400,000 is what Romney called not that much money about his speaking fees if I remember correctly.

No deal: the optimum solution. The Bush tax cuts die, the “unacceptable” sequestration happens.

touché

I don’t doubt they’ll fold like a $5 pup tent.

The Greater of Evils Must Always Be Ignored.

Commenters can’t freely bash without that axiom. It’s insane, this Kill The Orcs, Ignore The Nazgul mindset.

I’ll never understand it, as you just don’t get to a free Middle Earth without dealing with both problems.

The Democrats need to change woot (we own the other team) to waott (we ARE the other team’s twins).

It’s a sad state of affairs when I’m cheering on batshit crazy people in hopes of tanking a “grand bargain.”

That’s a great metaphor.

I’m so with you on that at least. I said yesterday at Daily kos that’s it a fucking shame when we have to rely on the batshittery of the teabaggers in Congress just to maintain the status quo for another week and a half. Didn’t go over well. *sigh*

At this moment the Tea Party is the only thing stopping the democrats from cutting ssi and medicare. Their unwillingness to raise taxes is actually helping the poor and elderly not take a benefit cut. In two weeks the cuts increase automatically so Obama gets his revenue but he loses his cover for cutting entitlements which is what he really wants to do. He wont need to compromise bcz he already has the rate increases. Making a deal right now allows him to pretend those mean ole republicans made him and Nancy do something they really just didnt want to do but had to. The Tea Party stopped him last year and hopefully they will stop him again. I called my republican congressman’s office and urged him to say no to any tax increases or else and to make no deals with Obama. We laugh at the Tea Party but they are the only part of the electorate that is feared by our elected officials- we progressives could learn something from them.

I’m hoping we go off the cliff. No deal, in regards to either taxes or spending, is better than this collective group of corrupted politicians and circus clowns will likely come up with. Going over the cliff is actually the best practical option, and has been for some time.

-stewartm

The cardinal rule to remember when dealing with the GOP is that there are two sets of rules.

One set is for the very wealthy and well connected( They can lie, cheat, and steal with impugnity AND no amount of money is too much). The other set is for the rest of us( you were responsible for choosing the right family to be born into and failed so you earned being lied, cheated and stolen from.)

the “unacceptable” sequestration happens.

“Unacceptable” to Beltway-land because the Pentagon takes the biggest hit.

-stewartm

Thank God for the Tea Party. lol- sad but they are the only thing keeping the safetynets from being cut by the democrats. This is funny and unbelievable.

Yep. Not cut out for an Academy Award. Might as well hang a sign around his neck that says. “I am acting.” I thought that the “Serenity prayer” was a nice attempt at distraction, just like the “having a beer with W” story. Importance was the failure to get caucus agreement. He has no negotiating wiggle room left. No obvious reason for President Obama to continue to deal with him. Look for side negotiations with Cantor next.

Going over the cliff is actually the best practical option, and has been for some time.

yep. Even the repugs acknowledge that getting a tax cut through for the 98% will be easy peasy after the cliff. My concern would be more unnecessary concessions from the caver in chief attached to such a bill, so it will be all bipartisany and stuff.

We laugh at the Tea Party but they are the only part of the electorate that is feared by our elected officials- we progressives could learn something from them.

If the “bold progressives” acted like the Tea Party, we’d have a public option now.

-stewartm

Maybe so.

But when they cut Social Security and Medicare they are going home.

They think their constituencies want that? Really? Their teabag constituencies want cuts, for everyone else.

When their neck goes on the chopping block they are going to rise up and VOTE THOSE TEABAG CONGRESSMEN (and any one else who votes that way) OUT!

It’s a sad state of affairs when I’m cheering on batshit crazy people in hopes of tanking a “grand bargain.”

Yep, grab some more of the red and blue pom-poms. And start chanting “Run out the clock. Run out the clock.”

2014 would almost certainly be a shitty year for incumbents of every stripe.

My one solace is that many of the Teabag Congressmen won’t have their 5 years in to get that cushy pension. HA HA HA

A little activism could pour some grease on that slippery slope. Third parties would be silly not to be getting their candidates and campaign plans ready now.

Some of us having been trying to convince people that we need to create a progressive alternative to the Democratic Party and utilize it in a similar method to the Tea Party. Many of us are sick to death of voting for the Lesser Evil and some of us aren’t even convinced they ARE the Lesser Evil anymore.

We’ve got to do something different.

Ding. Boy-oh, is that a wedge issue for the candidates that run against them. Congressional perks.

When their neck goes on the chopping block they are going to rise up and VOTE THOSE TEABAG CONGRESSMEN (and any one else who votes that way) OUT!

That is, if they’re still allowed to vote by then.

-stewartm, the ever-shrinking electorate planned for our “democracy”

Never underestimate this president’s almost preternatural ability to spin his head around 180 degrees and regurgitate a pea soup plan that hurts everyone except the oligarchs. It’s coming.

We all need to be ready to go to primary anyone who votes to cut SS and Medicare. D/R the way to get them out is easiest with the gerrymandering in the primary. If that fails then we must pound the incumbent for voting that way. That ain’t going to fly for people of either stipe.

There’s a happy thought.

That happens by primarying from the less progressive end of the candidates and winning. The TEA Party stood on 40 years of primary purges in the Republican Party. And on winning the election instead of just making a statement.

If you look at their app;roach to spending cuts to avert the sequestor that passed tonight, you have the evidence that going over the cliff is the best option left. They got rid of the military cuts that were supposed to be the part of the sequester that pressure them to play nice. They added all of those cuts on the program side of the ledger. Any one crying about the dire effects on the economy if the sequester stays in place is lying to you. The contraction to the economy will be the same or worse with a grand bargain. The Repubs will demand the same pain as sequester. Going over the cliff returns 4 trillion over 10 years. The sequester cuts some important programs, that the Repubs will demand be cut more to alleviate the burden on the military. I think we are better off going over the cliff than having everything negotiated away in a quick grand bargain

Somebody has apparently at one time or another, convinced Obama that if everybody but the rich hate his policy, that’s a good thing. Probably some rich fucker.

I am curious to know what it will take to get the people into the streets? Do they simply take it in the gut blow after blow? Why don’t they do anything? Look at the Greeks, Spaniards, French? Why do they come out into the streets and Americans play with the smart phones?

I worry more about the theft of elections electronically.

They aren’t going to outright cancel them when it’s so easy to make sure the “right candidate is elected”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K_Rgwo0Ut8

http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/breaking-retired-nsa-analyst-proves-gop-is-stealing-elections/article20598.html

Someone has got to start the candidate recruitment. Now. And they have to have some strength and name recognition or you need to have 170,000 votes already committed from you Rolodex or FB friends. It’s easy to say, “Primary them.” But you must win and win several seats for incumbents and the media to notice a change.

The result of 98% of the American people investing( small business and start ups+ population change driven growth ); doing the things that people do to live, trying to prosper and consumers’ spending accounting for 68-70% of GNP isn’t taking us over the cliff. In the end they’ll get their tax cuts, their unemployment benefits, their child tax credits, etc. Growth is essential and good. The draconian cuts to spenders would drive us much quicker to that clffy point. 1)If seniors close their purses on the perception that Dem’s are breaking the SS contract or they’re a target in some way, not so good. Means testing, not included, on the 2%. 2) Cuts to the military would be a very good thing. It is the worst choice for stimulating the overall economy and a bloated golden calf, to boot. Most of all, it’s not sustainable. The voters know this, too. A 30-35% cut is doable. 3) The transportation bills and the rest of the stimulus spending ensures Republican votes. No incumbent goes home and runs against highway expansion, bridge rebuilding, water projects, energy efficiency, etc in 2014 and beyond. These projects are vital to incumbents on both sides of the aisles. And, explain away deficit spending quite easily: the ” see what I got ya ” pitch. All in all, the mood of the public is overwhelmingly slanted to giving the rich and corporations a bloody nose or worse. Much more so than in 2008. The pols know this. They’ll respond, too. There’s a better day for bargaining awaiting both parties after Jan. 20th. They all should go home and prepare for it.

Somebody has apparently at one time or another, convinced Obama that if everybody but the rich hate his policy, that’s a good thing.

That’s the earmark of a Very Serious Person. (TM)

-stewartm

We are idiots?

We are being drugged?

We want to be serfs?

Their donors have never liked SS, Medicare or Medicaid. And their districts are heavily red, with constituencies who depend less on these programs, and who will follow along like lost puppies when all those spin dollars tell them these “entitlements” were ruining the economy, so had to go. Suppress the rest of the vote with their state control, and there you go. They know 2014 is an off-year election, and the turnout won’t be as heavy.

Spot on. Time for some Progressive purity primarying. It’s got to be done from inside the party structure because third parties just don’t have a chance in hell of getting enough members, or even a coalition of enough, to force the change that we need. It sucks but that’s what we have to work with. When you’ve only got limestone to sculpt, it boots nothing to refuse to use it because you prefer marble.

Comfortable, reasonably well fed people don’t start revolutions. As bad as some of us might think things are, our problems pale into almost insignificance when compared to the Greeks and Spaniards and all you have to do to get the French into the streets is to sneeze in English.

I know the deck is stacked against us. But we have a good chance if someone respectable runs and then we attack the incumbent hard .

This is still the third rail. Don’t think it’s not. We need to use social media to make people aware of any incumbent who voted to cut. Start a frenzy of outrage so to speak.

I worry more about the theft of elections electronically.

I worry about that too, though the corporatists’ zeal to loot America NOW for everything not nailed down is creating enemies even on the right.

Their response to their increasingly lack of ability to win free and fair elections has been to double-down against–well, free and fair elections. And (Michigan’s emergency manager laws) against democracy itself. It’s why I believe that the old Marxists were correct on this particular point–the end game of laissez-faire capitalism is fascism. Unfettered laissez-faire capitalism inevitably ends up destroying the very things its most ardent propagandists claim it promotes and needs to thrive.

-stewart, “managed democracy”, coming to your town soon?

Are you kidding? It’s their districts who are most dependent.

I’m telling you their people only think cutting spending is what they want because billions have been spent on propaganda to put that in their heads.

They think it means the other guy. The people who don’t deserve it.

When they realize it means them, all hell is going to break lose in those red districts.

The Democratic Party leadership opposes primaries(look at what happened with Lamont in CT with Lieberman or Angus King in ME where leadership supported a THIRD PARTY CANDIDATE over progressives choice). So as long as people continue to support this idea that somehow people like Reid, Pelosi or Obama are on their side, we’re stuck. My opinion is was and will continue to be we have to look past the Democratic Party for solutions.

I’m not sure why we aren’t trying to help the Green Party in Arkansas as a test run. Last go round the Democratic Party shut down a primary for Pryor. Pryor was conservative enough that the GOP didn’t bother running anyone and the Green Party was the only option. The candidate got a respectable 27%.

If you’d been in the streets over the last year, you’d know the answer to that question. The US police forces are very aggressive in breaking up protests. That discourages large crowds. US protesters responded with more mobile tactics. Police began random snatch-and-grab of folks they labeled as “leaders”. In Europe public space is still recognized as public space. In the US it is considered the corporate space of the municipal or county government, or the state or federal government and controlled like it was private space.

There are still folks in the streets in the US almost every day. Today 30 in Charleston SC closed the Wando Port in protest of the Walmart ship arriving with clothing manufactured in the Bangladshi plant that burned. Folks in Texas are still standing in the way of the XL pipeline.

So gather up 100,000 of your closest friends and go have some fun.

And btw, the answer is no, I wasn’t off cooking a turkey when I stopped responding to you this morning. I was going to work…just like I had said I was.

They think it means the other guy. The people who don’t deserve it.

They also are the low-information voters who think that all that ‘guv’mint spending’ either goes just to welfare queens or to foreign aid.

-stewartm

That’s it. That’s been my point for quite some time; to reform is easier than to begin from scratch. The political evidence IS IN THE TEAPARTY.

So to extend my metaphor, you kill some Orcs, install some Hobbits, and deny some Nazgul’s advances simultaneously. You can’t win this war in a once-and-for-all manner. Nope. There will always be the struggle.

And to further extend, I’ll point out that the hero was Frodo. The little person who made the journey through the struggle.

Galadriel, Gandalf and certainly Saruman nor Sauron didn’t take the day. The little guy did, through the hum-drum, un-glamorous and hard journey.

Frodo didn’t blog his way through Middle Earth.

I’ve been waiting to see the names the hard working pragmatists are going to get to reform the party since they feel any third party vote is pie in the sky idealism and primaries are where you “reform” to get progressive policy makers in Congress.

It isn’t like Mark Warner’s opinion on cuts to save the social safety net hasn’t been known for a while and he’s up for re election in 2014.

That would make Jill Stein, Celeborn, who was very well meaning and certainly an ally but was ultimately irrelevant and seemed to be on a different page than everybody else all the time.

The White House must recalibrate to that.

Calibrate? Calibration requires a rock solid standard.

I don’t see one.

LMAO! Right? How does one calibrate jello?

The President is simply not going to be able to win a grand bargain.

If getting a grand bargain means gutting Social Security (which is Obama’s dream project), I’d rather have no deal.

Like I said. You have to beat the establishment. Lamont didn’t, and in Maine the other candidates were worse. There are states in which the Democrats must rebuild infrastructure. Having progressive candidates run could help do that and quickly gain control of those skeleton party structures.

Third party strategies can work (there are no different than an anti-establishment run within a party but they have to build both candidate name recognition and party brand). What’s going on in Arkansas? Is the Green Party candidate running again? Can the candidate get some geographical diversity so as not to depend only on Little Rock or some other city’s votes alone? That 27% needs to be doubled to win.

My opinion is that we have to look independently at which strategies to support. In some states, it might be primarying within the Democratic Party. Ins some states, it might be supporting a Green or Socialist ticket. In some states, heck, it might even be running within the Republican Party.

Heh. One of the sillier non-gooper sites on the net.
~

It’s not up to the “hard working pragmatists” to come up with progressive candidates and make sure that 170,000 people know and love and will actually go to vote for them. It is up to the progressive challengers to do that either within the Democratic Party or as a third party.

It’s not clear from you statement about Warner whether you are generally talking about Democratic Blue Dogs or are saying that you are in Virginia. It takes substantial local knowledge of the people in a district to figure out how to win a Congressional seat. It is not easily done from outside the district.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/02/12/us/entitlement-map.html

Even more markedly on food stamps than SS, Medicare or Medicaid. That hasn’t stopped them. All they have to do is tell their constituents the economy will be better for them if the “freeloaders” (not them, of course)are cut off from that “government teat”. It’s worked well so far.

I don’t live in Arkansas so I’m not sure of the detail other than to know those numbers did include some Democrats who were frustrated and angry with the Democratic Party for tanking a primary.

I agree with your assessment that multiple strategies with the end purpose being strategy that supports progressive policy rather than party ideology ought to be the direction we go and it may need a multi prong touch. To make the idea that third parties are a viable solution(like pushing against a brick wall it seems) those of us that support third parties really need to understand that we can’t just start a month or two before an election and expect victory. Likewise those that are primarying a heavy hitter should be putting feelers out. Sadly, i think a lot of people are burnt out. It feels like fight after fight after fight with little headway just preventing slide downward.

Actually it IS up to the hard working pragmatists to come up with primary candidates. They are the ones that believe an acceptable strategy is to work within the party infrastructure so YES they are the ones responsible for finding candidates that can stand up to the party infrastructure.

Also, I’m fairly certain that there IS a Democratic Party infrastructure IN Virginia. Just as I’m fairly sure that despite the fact that Mark Warner would cut Social Security in a NY minute that he’ll have absolutely no primary challenge. I’m equally sure I’ll be told I should vote for the @ss to “save” myself from the Republican alternative.

I agree, but I don’t think they even know that’s coming. I think most Americans, and this is because of the media’s lack of reporting, believe the cliff is a spending bonanza that will increase the deficit. Also, so far, the only one proposing cuts to social security is Obama. There is a disconnect for sure. If Obama would have just kept to his line in the sand which an overwhelmingly majority supported, end tax cuts to the wealthy, don’t touch entitlements, the public, even red staters supported that.

I listen to them call in to the RIght Wing shows bitching about the undeserving getting something.

But they always have their own sob story and how it’s so hard for them.

And the Right Wing hosts empathize all the while constantly bashing the undeserving.

It’s almost comical.

Well, maybe it has to take effect before they realize they’ve been had..

But I know one thing, these people are going to be pissed.

Well played, sir. :-)

A lot of these people are gullible rubes. If they don’t even realize what is coming it will take little work from the Hannitys, Becks, and Limbaughs of media to convince them that any cuts are the fault of Obama and his Democratic cohorts(and they won’t be entirely wrong) and that the GOP member should not be blamed since they are just a lowly hand wringing minority(goodness this strategy looks awful familiar to me as a Democrat)and need more members to “save” the electorate.

It’s a big ol’ game for DC and their punditry.

Exactly.

and yet throughout the election cycle people that choose to independantly choose to vote for something other than Barack Obama were called pie in the sky idealists over and over and over by the Very Serious Pragmatists that insisted that an election cycle was no time to go looking for a third party solution.

There is a reason I feel confident that Warner won’t get a challenge. Progressive activists play checkers while the Party Leadership plays chess. Every single time they seem to fall for the idea that leadership is on their side even when it tanks the activists chances in places like Conneticut or Maine.

Remember, the Dems are fearless at the bargaining table. Give an inch, and they’ll give you a mile, and another mile. The Republicans are quaking in their shoes tonight, fearing what else Obama’s gonna (give them) throw at them.

As I recall reading sometime back, the poor (a group that is expanding every day), according to Ryan and Rand, needs to be punished and suffer. That provides incentive for them (us) to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and reach for the stars in hopes of someday becoming rich.

And what classifies as “poor” has expanded so much, that the Fox fiends are now breaking it into categories: The “deserving poor,” etc.

I just finished laughing from this spectacle on the House floor

DDay, I think they did this as a gift, just for you.

The reality is that there will be no deal.

Personally, this is what I’d like as a gift.

Obama gave away the $250K level and Social Security cuts for nothing … Boehner couldn’t even deliver the $1M level.

Progressives will never have a better opportunity exert their leverage on this process … the only bill that can pass the House will have to have Democrat majority … they should demand the original $250K limit and toss the COLA cuts … NOW!!!!

Well, Senator McConnell had to fake filibuster his own bill after Harry Reid called McConnell’s bluff and called for a vote on it.

I think ascribing motive to House Republicans who would not vote for the bill is a mistake, though. It is entirely possible that some of them wanted to vote on an amount lower than a million. Remember, every single House member has to run for re-election every two years.

After running twice on raising taxes on income over $250K, Obama has already put $400K on the table during tough negotiations with himself.

Regardless of my Party, I would not want to run against someone pointing out that I had risked going over the fiscal bluff in order to protect people making half a million a year from paying one cent more in taxes on a mere $100,000 of that half million.

The real issue no one wants to face is that Democrats are more like Republicans than anyone wants to admit.

The politicians need to dump those labels and re-align completely into Liberals and Conservatives. Then, each of the new Parties could get its people to vote cohesively. It would be more honest for voters, too. And we would finally see if the U.S. is indeed as conservative as both major parties claim or as liberal as Rachel Maddow once claimed.

Then again, I love modest proposals.

X-rated Circus at that…When Eric pulls Boner’s “plan B” on the floor…..Or did they jerk it in the GOP Caucus? No Money shot is just bad porn too. also.

x2

Liberal progressive goals, with a tailored electoral strategy. What works in heavy D+ districts will not work everywhere.

Per others, the electoral strategy has to be supported by vigorous activism/Occupy.

Bull.

I got called out for advocating that folks in SWING STATES vote for Obama, because of the ONE issue on which he/corporate Dems and Romney were not in 100% agreement, voting rights.

If you think having wingnuts in charge is such a great idea, come to Wisconsin and see what Scott Walker’s doing. He and the wingnuts control all three branches of government. We’ve got a critical election in April to take back the state Supreme Court. We need all the help we can get to beat the Koch brothers.

We also need to work with wing nuts on issues upon which we have large agreement, marijuana, ending the occupations, and Wall Street.

cswaltz, I apologize. I know you do not think having wingnuts in charge is such a great idea.

At least for the moment, Obama and Pelosi appear to have seriously underestimated just how nuts the wingnuts are. Or they overestimated the power of the MSM to move them. Or, a little of both.

Dayen always does amazing analysis. I don’t even know if FDL will be worth my time once he’s gone.

AMEN!

Plan “B” is nothing more than cover for the capitalist class which with it’s chief spokesman Obama will present to us the already laid out “compromises” that will have it’s own title- Plan “C.”

It’s important here to understand the role of the liberal Dems in the capitalist dog and pony show.

Liberalism’s role in the last 100 years or so- is to be capitalism’s “good cop” as opposed to the “bad cop” that the right wing is. They are there to placate the working class just enough with soft-spoken promises and crumbs so that they do not decide to just revolt and hang all the capitalists from lamp posts, which would include most of the liberal political and intellectual leaders as well. Or at least to lull people back into their slumber of complacency that everything is going to be ‘all right’ so the great unwashed can return to distracting themselves through the lottery, celebrity stories, drugs or religion. Whenever capitalism is in crises, it is the liberals who cruise in and save the day, whether it is Roosevelt with the New Deal or LBJ with his Great Society. And when it comes to enforcing capitalist hegemony in the Third World, there is virtually no difference at all between the liberals and conservatives. It was the Democrats who incinerated hundreds of thousands of Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who wiped out millions of Vietnamese and poisoned their crops with Agent Orange, who bombed Yugoslavia into the Stone Age, who imposed sanctions on Iraq that killed half a million children under the age of 10, and are today sending imperialist armies on a rampage in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as Colombia, which no one even notices.

The only difference why today is particularly bad is because of two things: the liberal political and intellectual elites have become so entirely corrupted by corporate lobbyist money that they are no longer willing or even CAPABLE of making the minimal concessions to the working class that are needed to save the system that they champion along with their supposed conservative adversaries. Second, and this is a point that many on the American left do not want to admit because of the effects of a 50-odd year legacy of McCarthyism, the lack of a competing economic system in the world since the demise of the Soviet Union and the capitalist reforms in China(with the exception of countries like Cuba and Venezuela). This has convinced the capitalist class here that they can do whatever the HELL they want because they don’t have to be convincing the working class that they have it better here then in Russia or other socialist countries. This is why capitalist ideologues also expend so much time and effort churning out anti-communist propaganda, to pound into people’s heads that no matter how bad capitalism gets, the alternative is even worse.

O will cave like he has done on every issue put before him and agree with the 1,000,000 because… well it is just who he is and it serves him better 4 years from now when he starts collecting ALL of those wonderful consulting and speaking fees his buddies at the banks and wall street are going to give him. the classic backdoor “when you get out of office” bribe set up. you do realized that clinton got rich that way from selling us out with nafta and now obama is going to take down social security, the republicans wet dream. NO ONE is that bad at negotiation unless they want to be. crap people he put tim geithner in charge how much proof do you need that this has been a set up from day one. you know tim, the that wall street says is THEIR MAN IN D.C.

we are a nation of fools for even starting to trust that any of these …. none of them care a rats ass about our country other than how it will make them richer.