For all the people that stood in line for hours on November 6th and didn't give in and didn't give up it's an insult.

Less balls than Thelma and Louise.

You're upset about which part?

Shatters poor ProSense's worldview.

ProSense is a strong supporter of the Administration, and always has been.

I'm trying to suss out her disagreement with the actual provisions.

Alright then; rescinded, I s'pose. Must have been thinking of someone else.

rebutting every attack on the Administration, so,I'd say she's a good gauge here.

You're suggesting that Prosense is... an Obama-hater?

Are you kidding me?

We are caving on the tax issue in exchange for essentially no concessions in regards to spending cuts or the debt ceiling, meaning we will have these same sort of problems in a couple of months, except we won't have automatic tax hikes to use for leverage.

That's stimulative and necessary.

Oh, right, The GOP Congress would be "guaranteed" to do that anyway after the cliff. Right. Sure.

The notion that we have no leverage on spending now is also pure speculation.

I'm fine with fighting the GOP again in a couple of months on all the issues. It's not clear why so many progressives are afraid of taking a smaller victory here and fighting them again in a few months.

Looks pretty good.

They'd have folded by the end of the month, probably when the new Congress is sworn in. There would be nothing to hide behind, no amount of talking points that could allow them to avoid the backlash it would cause if they were seen as obstructing a vote to lower taxes for all incomes up to $250k.

And we do have no leverage on spending. What leverage do you think we have? The only thing would be military cuts, but even the Democrats in charge don't really want to be accused of allowing the military to be cut. So, what leverage do we have? We had these huge tax increases, which they have now capitulated on and will now be left to debate the irrational Republicans in a couple of months (really, that's all you could get, a two month delay?!) with no tax leverage to hold their feet to the fire.

It's interesting to me that the main argument for why this deal is so bad relies on the reasonableness of the House Republicans!

We'll see what happens with spending. I doubt it's as bad as you think. It's just as true to say that the GOP has no leverage on spending, because the sequester is what it is. I'm not that worried about it.

They want spending cuts. They welcome the sequester. They just don't want the tax hike, and now, with this deal, they won't have to worry about the steep tax hikes that were in store. The Republicans aren't willing to go to war (no pun intended) over military spending cuts; for starters, even most Democrats won't speak of truly cutting the military. Secondly, if the military was to be affected by the sequester, the Republicans would cry bloody murder all over the airwaves and the Democrats would just eventually cave.

Once the tax issue is settled, we have no leverage.

The Republicans will claim that this tax deal is THEM compromising, so, in just two months time, what are you going to give them in terms of spending cuts to avert "the fiscal cliff" 2.0 and an increase in the debt ceiling?

As of now, it's gloomy speculation as usual.

Enjoy your symptom.

The WH could have gotten all of these and more with fewer concessions, and the fact that the debt ceiling isn't included and sequestration will be kicked down the road two months is bizarre.

This is the scaled back deal to preserve middle class taxes at current levels. It worked.

The other deals come later. I doubt the Republicans are as loaded for bear on those as the pessimistic assessment suggest. The "badness" of the deal strikes me as speculation on what could happen or could have happened. The provisions themselves look pretty good.

He was giddy at the thought of Dems having to come back time and time again.

call the GOP's bluff on the debt ceiling. The GOP gets no concessions now or later. So there is no incentive for the GOP to give in on that now. We'll have to wait to see if the GOP has the nerve to actually take us into shut down.

with defense spending is actually the best move for us. I know I don't need to spell it out for you. In addition, there is a constitutional ace in the Fourteenth Amendment:

"'The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for the payments of pension and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion shall not be questioned."

President Obama knows constitutional law quite well. The debt ceiling would not survive a constitutional challenge.

Norquist may have approved it, but the Club for Growth and the Heritage Foundation are scrambling to scuttle it in the House.

It's the exact same scenario as the last deal, so I think it's just as DOA.

That parts kind of important.

They basically put off the sequester by two months by applying it more slowly. But I agree the details of those cuts are important. if the sequester were to kick in tomorrow, you'd see cuts to social spending there too, and drastic ones.

The problem is we've a lot more waste in our military spending than in our social services, and I have a feeling it's going to be tit-for-tat on how much gets cut where. I have been wrong before, but it does make me nervous.

They're one to one on military and discretionary over the cliff.

Actually, we can't spare much of anything at this point. Which puts us in a difficult situation. All for such a short term extension? I'm not sure it's worth it.

It sounds very clever.

Seriously. I don't get it.

They sweat and toil and tell the American people how hard they fought and come out with nothing

The President and Biden negotiated to avoid the so called fiscal cliff than to fight for what was just.

We will see the same garbage in two months and they will come out with garbage

I was about to offer a spirited defense of ProSense, which likely would have humiliated us both. So thanks for the explanation.

Not bad. As long as the Dems demand 1 dollar in revenue for every 1 dollar in spending cuts in the future, it's a good deal.

I support this.