You gonna believe the White House or your lyin’ eyes?
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The White House is fighting back, trying to show that the tax cut extension was actually a big win rather than what many viewed as a cave-in. Immediately below is the White House fun chart. Below that is another look at the same data. Both come from the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank headed by Clinton’s former Chief of Staff John Podesta. The numerical difference is due to the second chart showing each sides priorities, in the case of Obama it consists of a payroll tax cut, extended unemployment benefits and extended credits. The Republican priority was extending the tax cuts.
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The smaller Republican portion is divided among 4.8 million people. The larger Democrat portion is divided among 156 million people.
In addition, the payroll tax cut is a terrible idea. This adds fuel to the fire of the false “Social Security is bankrupt ” claims.
Does anyone – other than lemmings still sporting I Love Obama pins happily sailing off a cliff – actually believe these will be reinstated in 2 years? What will be called by the corporate media and Republicans and any democrats a “tax increase?”
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Wow! What a discussion. We haven’t had a good one like this in a while. My 2 cents worth are probably worth only a penny for your thoughts right now but here goes. Question: Where the hell were all of these suddenly progressive Democrats when the President really needed them a year or a year and a half ago folks. It is not like this tax increase situation is a great big surprise. EVERYBODY knew is was coming long before now. When the President was fighting for healthcare with a single payer option where were all of these fiery people in congress. Except for Senator Sanders they sure as hell were not fighting like this FOR him then. They were standing by and letting the Repubs pound the crap out of him. We had majority in the senate and in the house and the was none of this “I am not going to stand for it” then. Why, I ask, did the congress start pounding this tax issue a year ago instead of a month before they they got their butts kicked in the mid terms. While the President was trying to get something done and basically placed some trust in his party in power they dropped the frigging ball and sat back and watch the “just say no” bunch screw up everything. Now we are between the devil and the deep blue sea and everyone wants to blame the President. Well President Obama might want to grab a Fender Stratocaster and whip out a couple of bars of Eric Clapton’s “Before you Accuse Me” (Take a look at yourself).
I think the president got exactly what he wanted, in healthcare and financial reform and the tax cuts.
Keep in mind the Dems got far more in corporate contributions than the Reps did.the HCR bill was written by Wellpoint, their stock shot up after the bill passed.the health insurance industry spent 6 million dollars in TV commercials SUPPORTING the bill. If you do the math, you realize it is essentially Republican legislation benefiting the insurers, not the people.Exactly what the president intended.
As with HCR, the financial reform pkg started off good too. Obama worked behind the scenes to strip that of any meaningful reform as well, much of what he wanted passed thru Geithner at Treasury.Again, bank stocks rose when this passed. Does that sound like tough financial legislation?
It’s part of his mystique that he’s a liberal fighting for radical change, in fact he’s a centrist who fights for business interests.
You’re right about the Dems not fighting either, most of them know who butters their bread and funds their re-election, corporate contributors.
What many have discovered is a lot of people resent the crappy deal on HCR, it cost some people reelection. This is another bad deal, the tax cuts, so this time some Dems are putting up a fight, hoping come next elections people will remember.
I am with you Oso. My only point is that if the progressives had had this much passion then we would have gotten a much stronger healthcare bill and put the Repubs in their place. As it is they are looking desperate. I realize the tax bill is a bad one but come February and after then we are sacrificing those on unemployment. The Repubs and the wealthy will survive and just be less rich. The middle and lower income groups will truly suffer.
On rereading your post Bill, yeah you’re right. I’m so touchy about people blasting us lefties that I get defensive!
Yep,us working class types always bear the brunt of things, this is no exception and its gonna get worse.
This was an interesting thread indeed, however there is something that must be said to The Lt. and any others who think that long standing and highly respected MMA author OSO is a racist. He is not. We do not engage people with such tendencies to write for us. It is not who we are and it is not the message that we want to send. While he is passionate, most of us here at the “Mad House” are passionate and highly opinionated to boot. We’re damn proud of that!
I have no doubt there will be more pitched battles in our future, and those are welcome, but let me dispel the myth that racism, in any shape or form, exists with either the editorial or writing staff here at MMA. It does not and will not be tolerated.
Have a wonderful weekend and don’t forget to vote for Obama in 2012 🙂
Everybody,
Thank you so much for reading, and thank you for your kindness in having my back.
My strong feelings about politics and the economy can be abrasive at times, and this can be taken in a manner different from the intent. This is perfectly understandable, these are emotional issues we discuss here.
I wrote to MyCue that my Inner Commanche takes over my reasoning at times, but there is a place at the table for the Inner Commanche as well.
Thanks again!
Oso, I am sorry to say that charts are a powerful way to present a position and skew the results however you want them to look by modifying the display of the chart. It is the electronic version of smoke and mirrors and reeks of deception. That said, I think I agree with your conclusion, so kudos! I am not ready, however, to cast aside my “I love Obama pin,” as I am not sure I could have negotiated a better deal at this point and time. If I held onto my pin this long, this specific deal is no occasion for discarding it. I am going to leave it in my pocket where I hid a months ago until I have a reason to relocate it.
Sincrely,
JMyste (Pleasantly Sailing Off a Cliff To My Doom)
ROFL, and thanks for your humor and response!
I have found that many of the progressives and liberals who are the loudest in their condemnation of the President actually started out with the most respect and reverence for him. If you never liked him to begin with, or were already prejudiced because of his race, then his policies would not cause the shock and outrage that they do.
For LT also, I am late in the game with my opinion, but let me say this: you seriously need to get the chip off your shoulder and/or fix that “hate-dar” you claim to have. There is no one here at MMA LESS racist than our man Oso.
If you want to debate the facts or the issues of one of his posts, that is great. But an ad-hominem attack on him in an attempt to discredit what he is saying is a weak argument.
This is for Lt, I have been reading Oso for about 6 months, and I disagree with him some, he is a passionate guy and it shows, but a racist, never.
I want to pose the following questions…
If you isolate the possibilities of Supreme Court Appointments, losing or winning Congress or the Senate. Take that out of the picture.
So what is the difference between Obama and GWB?
War
We have escalated the war in Afghanistan. We have contracted out large PERMANENT base like infrastructure in Iraq. Troop withdrawal has been equal with private “contractors” with war-corporations like Xe.
Economy
Tarp money by definition was supposed to be for all Toxic assets get assigned almost exclusively to international banking including foreign banks and corporations such as McDonalds, etc. Middle Class families who were the victims of the greatest Ponzi fraud ever committed are left to battle it out in Rocket Dockets.
Obama just last week instructs the Treasury to block Legal Aid for Homeowners facing foreclosure.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/156973/treasury-blocks-legal-aid-homeowners-facing-foreclosure.
Meanwhile there has been a complete lack of prosecution of any Wall Street Hustlers.
That’s the plan.
Forget the ones who caused the mess, blame it on the deadbeats that can’t deliver multi-millions to campaigns
Taxes
We all know how this turned out. It was manipulated political maneuvering in that Pelosi previously blocked a simple majority so the unemployment extension could be attached to Obama’s capitulation to the rich with the tax cuts.
Health Care
The Health care was a compromised “smokey room” deal to begin with. In fact the insurance companies have gotten such a good deal, I look to the Republicans battling against the Insurance companies because the companies will not want to repeal this sudden HUGE base of new customers with rules and loopholes creating even greater profits, including the false flag of rate hikes because of the added expenses of the “new healthcare”
So that is the opinion being spouted by the Liberal Lemmings. You have to support Obama, but it’s not really because of his accomplishments or his policies.
You have to support him because if you don’t, someone might what? Support the wars? Allow Wall Street to get carte blanche? Only pay attention to the rich? Allow BP to get away with trashing the Gulf? Back off on Global Warming legislation? Support Israel in any kind of illegal embargo? Give billions worth of F-35 fighters for free to Israel while freezing federal employee pay? Just what has Obama accomplished that we wouldn’t raise holiest of hell if it was GWB doing it?
Krell,
You just summed up what I’ve been trying to say for several months, and you did it better.
There is little appreciable difference between the two wings of what has become a single corporate party.They compete for donations but effectively they are the same.
Each appeals to its base, then pursues what its donors want.
See this is what I don’t and will never get. If you are against the policies coming from this admin and congress, which this one is awful, somehow you are a racist against the president. Being against war, being against tax cuts for those who don’t need it, being against giving credit card companies more ways to screw the consumer is just that. Being against give aways to large corporations in the hopes they will regulate themselves and in the case of insurance companies, use that money for consumers, is not being a racist against the man himself, it’s being against policies that on their face are just assinine. Being against a policy, not against the man as a person is entirely possbile although to hear some people you would never know that. I can’t just get into my cheerleader outfit, complete with pom poms, and cheer some of the policies allowed to continue as if Dubya was still in office. It goes against everything I am as a liberal democrat. We have Bill Clinton getting in on the act now too, from the WH. Seeing as Big Dog is still loved by many, they figure trotting him out, will pacify some of us. Nope hardly, you give away tax cuts to those who don’t need it at the expense of the many, we are done with me personally volunteering my coin and time to get democrats elected. I’ll vote and am lucky enough to live in CA where if I feel like it, I can lodge a protest vote. Like I said on Mycues’ posting, they’ll get my vote but only mine and they can figure out how to get that corporation into the voting booth that funds them. It won’t be pretty at all. Oh and why in the hell is he making deals with the republicans who wrote this shit into law, KNOWING it would expire. Who is the one that wrote keeping these tax cuts in place, no one seems to be owning that part of the farce. Meanwhile, republicans get to set the message that these are tax hikes, the likes of which we have never seen by PO. BULLSHIT, it was republicans that wrote this crap up, knowing they would expire who are now fighting to keep it in place. Why do dems even have to be involved. If the republicans want the votes to keep the tax cuts, let them find the votes their own selves. We dems, should be nowhere near this crap, let alone actually touting it as a good thing the way PO is.
Here’s the very long transcript for what the triangulator in chief(Bill) had to say. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is standing on the senate floor trying his damndest to show how this will screw the working and middle class, if we go along with these cuts. They won’t stop there, this will be permanent because the republicans will not give in. Not only that, but they are now talking about redoing some of the tax law and guess who it benefits? Oh yeah, lifetime supply of Rice a Roni if you guessed the wealthiest among us. Bipartisan my ass, the republicans get what they want, PO looks like a wimp and the country goes evermore backwards is not bipartisanship, it is stupidity at its finest. Sorry for the long rant but this has taken me to a really pissed off state, and it isn’t even going to affect me and people like me. It is the person making 15 bucks an hour and struggling, who are going to be affected, and it just is not fair anymore to the middle and working classes of this country to keep giving breaks because someone has money. When is enough enough for people? No need to answer me, I think the answer for some is never.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/us/politics/10tax.html?_r=3
FORMER PRESIDENT CLINTON: Yes.
It was taking up too much space for my liking. Here is the video link instead.
http://news.yahoo.com/video/politics-15749652/23447613#video=23448314
Jess, from everything I’ve read that you’ve related here at MMA, you a fair, smart, good hearted lady. When you get pissed, you spill it. I agree with you on much and though I am disappointed to the point of not wanting the POTUS as my choice any longer, I don’t wish harm, ill will nor failure on him. More that he had not chosen failure (call it bipartisanship) or the strategy he did.
This whole thing is coming to a place where folks are walking away from one another and mean-ness takes up. Oso is no racist. Oso has a large good heart and his honesty is a fault as he talks his truth… in company of disagreement. Same with you or me. But folks must know here, that Oos is a good and kind man who cares about our world, the life we are being offered and the injustices that go unattended through bad politics and lies. He cares for each story; red, white, black, brown… no matter race and he writes a his justice to it. Gee, that’s what it’s about… isn’t it?
And isn’t the Vermont Senator something?
He was like energizer Bernie today and speaking for me as well as many others, you’ll probably agree. I think this is what the powers that control the gold want. they want us all in fighting, so we won’t see them looting behind our backs. It’s really unfortunate that speaking the truth anymore gets you called names. Today I was a racist republican because I spoke my mind somewhere else, about what a crappy deal I thought this was for the country. I figure when the racism canard is trotted out, there is no way to continue a conversation but that’s just me, I tend to stay away from people that do that. If you can’t talk without calling me that or calling me names, then you don’t want to hear what I have to say, whether it is good bad or indifferent. Oh by the way, I’m one that benefits from this, so I have no idea where the person was coming from but that’s another story. I get upset about it but then shrug it off. What can you do, other than speak your truth and be who you are when you can?
I’m just sick to the stomach about, let’s compromise when the only compromising so far, has been democrats giving in on good deals to get shitty ones. The health care debate was the start for me. You don’t negotiate ever from the bottom and hope you’ll get things added. You go for the gold(single payer) and whittle it down to the public option. That’s just one example out of many where I think we have been shafted. It’s the single mom Bernie Sanders was talking about today, that has to sleep in front of a wood stove in her kitchen because she has no money for heating oil these policies screw. It is that family he talked about, that had to make a decision, do we get heating oil or do we feed our kids.
I was in tears when he started talking about us being behind other industrialized nations, as far as childhood poverty. No child should ever go hungry and no parent should ever have to make the decision, food or other things in this supposed wealthiest place on earth. Asking myself, how can this happen in this country. Where at most 100k people are getting all the benefits at the expense of the rest of the 300 million or so.
I’m seeing folks very afraid today.
Last nights’ MSNBC line up stirred, even wider, what is left of a left base. I was very impressed with what I did not pay attention to during the election… what the Union folks behind Hillary had to say about Obama’s lack of fighting skills… and running off to the corporate hacks in the end… it gets to me. I didn’t do my due diligence? When Clinton said he wanted to see his country do well … I think back on what Matt Taibbi has written, along with Corn and so many other Hunter S. Thompson gone gonzo’s (my personal journalistic mentor / hero) for the last 19 months and I’m chagrined to think that Clinton ‘compromised’ us further into the quagmire we are in right now financially.
I’ve watched and supported (with phone calls) Senator Sanders all day. I’ve also polled my African-American friends… to a person, each is aghast at the President’s proposal and his lack of fortitude… choice words about being thrown under the bus. So, though I can imagine that there is a racial bias to expand, it will not be resoundingly complete…
What I do hope is that we all get to someplace better soon. But gee, you know, I’ve been hoping that for over ten years now! Too effn’ long …. too long. Someplace better soon…
But not at the cost of the Obama Tax Cuts.
Hate. That’s the common thread through all of your articles. Hate.
I don’t know you “Oso” but I get the sense from your articles, all well written by the the way, that you hate Barack Obama not for his policies, but because he is black. It is rare that I see such venom directed against one man simply because of policy differences.
We agree and we disagree and that old saw about agreeing to both, but what you write goes beyond the pale.
I am a black man. I can spot a hater and you are one. Sorry. Just making a statement. Maybe I’m right and maybe I’m wrong but you hate BHO because of the color of his skin. At least in my humble opinion.
Well Lt. I agree with Oso on quite a few things and this is one of them and I can tell you I have no hate in my heart for this man and the color of his skin has nothing to do with my opinions on this issue or others concerning this President. You are so very wrong. I don’t give a shit if he’s polka dot.
I’m sorry you feel that way,Lt.
If it makes any difference, I hold our president to the same standards to which I held GWB. Both catered to wealthy campaign contributors rather than the American people.
Although Whites never accused me of racism, many accused me of being a hater for my condemnations of the former president. I assure you my anger towards our president is based on principle.
I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts, and wish you well.
Lt. In Oso’s defense, I am certain that there is no racial prejudice on his part. I can vouch for him that he is not a racist piece of shit. He is a big hearted liberal, and extremely disappointed in the man he voted for. Or at least I think Oso voted for Obama. I’ll let him clarify. Personally, I belong to the camp that says that Obama is damned if he does, and damned if he doesn’t. Has this ever happened to a president before that every decision he’s faced with is bound to piss everyone off?
Thanks C.H.
Actually I voted for Nader, previous election was Peltier. I just couldn’t vote for a war supporter.
When he won though, my daughters and I had tears in our eyes.
I used to watch a TV show growing up, Make Room for Daddy.Danny Thomas starred in it, he’s Lebanese.Unlike everybody else on TV he was the same color as I was, the color of my Dad who had died a couple years earlier.He was like a father figure in that respect.I imagined Obama’s victory would give hope to so many young people that they could do anything, their skin color wouldn’t hold them back.
We all got in the car and drove thru the East Bay honking our horn and cheering.
The following morning BHO appointed a raging Zionist to be his Chief of Staff. I realized nothing really had changed, and history has thus far proven me right.
With the existing corporate financial structure controlling our policy and our elections I can’t see anything changing.
Mr. Lt. you need to dig a little deeper into this character Oso before you go making accusations like “racist” he has a history here at MMA of provocative and controversial posts that are well considered and appreciated (but not necessarily agreed with) by all the regular readers and contributors. I sincerely hope you keep reading and come back and comment again.
You can read all of Oso’s previous postings if you click on “Our Contributors” and scroll down and click on his name. You will find all of his contributions to read at your leisure. If you find any racism I would appreciate you bringing it to my attention, that would mean I, and everyone else has missed it.
Ditto there Mr Lawyer… but not many like minds here Oso. You have to be aware of that by now….
Mr. Lt. I have been writing with Oso for a good while. In fact since before this blog started we wrote on the old MadmikesAmerica. One thing I can say is that he is not a racist. Is he a bit intolerant toward just about all politicians, you betcha, but racist, not a chance. If you might have the time go back and read some of his past posts on social issues and I think you will understand. And I, like him, do appreciate you voice here at MMA regardless of whether you agree with any of us or not. That’s why we are here, too stimulate conversation.
LT, you need to recalibrate your “HATER” radar because you cannot be further from the truth on this one. Not even on the playing field. Just go back and read some of Oso’s previous posts.
That’s really all that needs to be said about this. Check the history before you judge, it speaks for itself.
Lt,
Oso has been very consistent in his opinion of the Obama administration and think I can state unequivocally that he is not a racist. His criticism of the state of our two major national parties has nothing to do with the race of the leaders of those parties.
Well stated, MyCue.
It what gets brought to the table is so good why does it need to be sold.
Everything has to be sold.
I don’t think I want to buy it Mike.
Obama 2012! 🙂
If he is the choice in 2012, I can say I would definitely, most possibly, maybe vote for him ;). It would be the lesser of two evils and I hate my vote being like that, I really do, it makes me sad. Now I might vote for a republican, if I knew them personally and they were running for a local race that won’t really damage anything like say, dog catcher. I’m a yellow dog dem for the most part and that is what pisses me off too, I feel taken for granted sometimes because the dems are the closest to what I believe in, and it’s almost like they know we won’t go anywhere else. I’m finding it harder and harder though, every election, to keep circling that oval for the lesser of.