I fullu agree with this, down to every comma. This could end up working out fairly well, or it could wind up as a disaster:

"So why the bad taste in progressives’ mouths? It has less to do with where Obama ended up than with how he got there. He kept drawing lines in the sand, then erasing them and retreating to a new position. And his evident desire to have a deal before hitting the essentially innocuous fiscal cliff bodes very badly for the confrontation looming in a few weeks over the debt ceiling.

If Obama stands his ground in that confrontation, this deal won’t look bad in retrospect. If he doesn’t, yesterday will be seen as the day he began throwing away his presidency and the hopes of everyone who supported him."

I just read the whole article at the NYT website, and I'm going to especially remember this last paragraph:

"If Obama stands his ground in that confrontation, this deal won’t look bad in retrospect. If he doesn’t, yesterday will be seen as the day he began throwing away his presidency and the hopes of everyone who supported him."

Based upon past performance, I'm expecting the latter scenario. I hope I'm wrong.

Therefore, this was a good deal even to Krugman.

This is BAD!!!

His nature seems to be to negotiate. There is some logic in that; that's how government is run. But when you're dealing with absolute loony extremists on the other side, a person might have to stand firm and swallow a bitter pill, in order not to let the loonies turn the country into a wrong direction.

latter is not acceptable and merely give free reign to tyranny.

that might be a good idea...to wait for the next Congress. But the current deal is okay, and at least we can move on.

believe in "lines in the sand" -- which means, to me, there is nothing he will truly stand firm on. I think it is his biggest flaw.

that's a wise, and honest, position.

For example, many here are all aflame regarding a chained CPI being offered ... touching SS is a line in the sand. But what if the offer was a chained CPI that exempted anyone whose income is 150% or less of the regional median income and housing subsidies for that group, along with allowing anyone, at any age to buy into medicare, with subsidies for that with income of 150% of the regional median income.

Would that deal be sweet enough to cross the SS line in the sand?

I know that's an extreme and unlikely example; but none-the-less, would give lie to the line in the sand being a flaw.

Absolute statements are rarely true, or honest.

And if I wasn't so old, fat, poor, and ugly, I'd probably have a chance with Bar Rafaeli. But I am, so I don't. And Obama won't, and it will.

Wait... What?

Republicans got no spending cuts. That's significant.

On second thought: This bill includes no spending cuts.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022109603

The point is Obama's negotiating style, it has always been horrible, I have no expectations of improvement.

remember the deal states that every $1 in spending cuts negotiated in the next round, must be accompanied by $1 in tax increases.

Tax increases! Additional revenue is built into the deal.

The "Obama's bad negotiating style" argument is increasingly circular.

"Well, yes, the provisions are good, but I don't like the route by which we got there."

I'm a pragmatist, and gauge things by effect. So I don't get this argument at all. If the provisions are good, then the negotiation was good. There is no separating the two. I think progressives have built up a false narrative whereby Obama always "caves", and they now apply that narrative as if it is fact, justifying their critique in a circular fashion. Did Obama give on some provisions? Sure. Did he hold fast on others. Yes. Did the GOP give more than Obama. On this deal? Oh, hells yeah. So only a pre-existing narrative that doesn't really fit the events can get us to some bad negotiating style. he broke them utterly on tax rate increases. Kicked their asses in the dust. He made them accept loads of tax credits for middle class families and businesses, unemployment extensions, and other perks. This is a good deal for most people. That's the result. If the result is good, then complaints about style fall flat. But they're really just symptomatic of a group that filters everything through some odd narrative they've concocted.

Something that gives you a short-term positive can end up biting you on the ass in the long run. Obama has signaled that he's not opposed to increasing the eligibility age for Medicare & going to the chained CPI for SS & vets benefits. How long before the Republicans get him to put those out on the table again? My bet is 2 months.

That means they actually have to have happened before I'm willing to get too worked up about them.

let's not worry about climate change until the polar caps are gone, Manhattan is underwater, and kudzu is growing in the Yukon Territory.

Moreover, concrete policies on those issues have clear effects.

In terms of the speculation regarding what might happen on the next policy fight, I see only speculation, and little in terms of predictive evidence.

Come on, Jackpine. I respect you. You're smart enough to know what a pragmatist position on these things means or doesn't mean. I'm obviously not saying that nothing can be predicted, or judged in terms of accumulating evidence. If that's the style of debate you want to have, silly gotchas that you know are not accurate, I'll leave you to it.

Have a good one!

the risks associated with what Obama put on the table.

Sure, he withdrew them this time, and scored some points, but this is hardly the first time that he has signalled a willingness to sacrifice aspects of Medicare and SS in dealmaking. I think the Republicans now know what they can get the next time they take some hostages. And I think they stand a good chance of getting it.

I'm utterly dismayed that a Democratic President in a position of relative strength was willing to put those things on the table at all, and I see it as boding ill for his future intentions.

In addition to the obvious damage that would ensue from cutting these vital aspects of the safety net, there is the additional harm to the party that would come from its identification with those cuts.

http://boldprogressives.org/leading-house-republican-says-obamas-deal-gave-away-all-his-leverage/

Re "I'm utterly dismayed that a Democratic President in a position of relative strength was willing to put those things on the table at all, and I see it as boding ill for his future intentions."

It set a very dangerous precedent, which will come back to haunt the Democrats in the not-too-distant future (like about two months). I haven't trusted Obama on the social safety net since he created the Catfood Commission, and still don't.

...a more senior staff member bit my head off for proposing a compromise....one that I should not have offered...he told me point blank...."E! there are two things you don't compromise on: EVIL AND IGNORANCE! If we're ever going to improve our society we've got to defeat those two monsters!" (I think I was dealing with abject ignorance in this case and gave in to it)

In Congress, we seem to be dealing with both....

therefore:

no more compromises.

needed saying.

I don't know which is worse, EVIL or IGNORANCE. We're screwed either way.

But there is no question the people driving this stuff are evil and most of the ones enabling them are ignorant.

The only reason for hope is that, while we can't change evil, we actually can fix ignorance.

And maybe that is how one tells the difference. If a person appears ignorant, but resists all education, then they are probably actually just evil, and therefore a lost cause.

This is just the latest chapter in an ongoing deficit drama. Simplifying slightly, last year Obama accepted a trillion dollars in spending cuts and now Republicans just accepted 600 Billion in new revenues. Just about EVERYONE in elected office at the national level agrees that much more deficit reduction is needed. Most of the sequestration has only been delayed a couple of months. We are about to hit up against the debt ceiling again - so this is just a short holiday pause in negotiations, not the final deal. Obama clearly is on record advocating for a much larger deficit reduction deal moving forward. How will that be achieved?

The next round will include major budget cuts - that is certain. If there were any relatively painless budget cuts outside of the Pentagon they were already part of the Trillion dollar cuts Obama accepted last year. It only gets more difficult from here. Meanwhile the easiest and least painful for almost all Americans to bear source for new Government revenues has also now been tapped – the Bush Tax Cuts. That was the only revenue pot available for Obama could harvest from by simply waiting out Republican intransigence.- they expired automatically. Now they are renewed permanently at the $450,000 and $400,000 a year income levels. We know that typical Americans would not have been touched by letting those taxes expire above the $250,000 level. We can not be certain that typical Americans will not be touched by any remaining source of increased revenues remaining to be tapped.

Take limiting tax deductions for example, that could include charity deductions – and many Americans depend on services provided by charities. The home ownership deduction is something that many middle class families depend on to lower their overall tax burden – and that might be part of some future deal also.

Meanwhile budget cuts will move front and center in the next round of negotiations, and Republicans will enter into them claiming that they already showed a willingness to compromise because they just agreed to 600 Billion in new taxes (that they were powerless to stop from happening at an even greater level if not deal was struck) without getting much of anything in new spending cuts. Obama did not get the resolution of the debt ceiling agreement that he wanted badly in return for bending on the Bush tax cuts. So we are headed toward a new round of confrontations without the leverage that the built in expiration date on the Bush tax cuts gave us last time.

Furthermore Obama had a clear public mandate to hold the line on extending tax cuts to the $250,000 level. He was able to argue that he won the election on that campaign pledge. For better or worse, depending on your viewpoint I suppose, Obama has now cashed in that clear mandate – that political capital has now been spent He will not be able to emphatically say that the public has already clearly spoken when the next round of budget impasses hit

It's all about the "appearance" o he was f being "tough." Some really miss the style of gwb because he exuded certainty and bluster, even in his wrongness and he looked damned tough doing it!

That is total fucking nonsense.

People just want Obama to stiffen his fucking spine once in a while instead of always moving the goal posts back and beyond meaningful changes to appease the unappeasable.

Yes ... that's what is seemingly wanted.

Very well-put.

If, for instance, the final "line" you would draw is at 400k, do you open negotiations with a bitter opponent by telling them that the line is 400k? If you're buying a car, is you're first offer your final offer? If you're buying a house, is your first offer the asking price? If you offer something lower and they return with a counter-offer, do you just walk away in a huff?

I have to admit, for myself, I like to keep things simple; I usually say what I would take or what I would give in the first place, and would rather walk away than dicker. But then I'm pretty much a failure at bargaining, and my history of buying and selling is pretty dismal - mostly I either pay too much, or wind up empty-handed.

I said it last night, and it is confirmed again by analyses like Krugman's. There is very little to be upset about in the deal itself. Unless one had the fairly rosy opinion that the House GOP would simply buckle and give us everything we wanted after the cliff hit (and this is what a good number of the deal's most ardent critics very oddly believe!), the provisions are what we would have gotten, and perhaps better on some of the long term tax breaks and stimulus for middle class and businesses (the GOP House voted just last week to kill all of those). So that leaves the looming specter of the debt ceiling and the (separate) issue of the sequester to deal with.

Progressive opponents of the deal insist that we've given up all our leverage on those two points. I don't think we have. There will be spending cuts, and they won't all be military. That's a fact, and is actually in keeping with Obama's "balanced approach" argument. The goal is to make them as rational and progressive as possible. Am I against such austerity measures? You bet your ass I am. They suck, and are probably not even necessary, and might even be counterproductive. I am not a deficit hawk (unlike some of the progressive critics of this deal who insist that a) taxes should go back to old rates for everybody, and b) the deal does not draw enough revenue...). But there's plenty of room to work. The progressive critics of this or any deal (except the magical deal we would have gotten after the cliff, when the House GOP suddenly would have acceded to every single progressive demand!) think that tax rates are the only leverage. We'll see how it goes. I think Obama and the Dem Senate will refuse to link the debt ceiling to the sequester, and refuse to talk sequester on spending cuts alone. Criticizing this deal based on speculation over the next deal is a neat trick, since it allows one to say anything without needing to point to actual events or provisions. But it's a parlor trick, at best. The provisions of this actual agreement are strongly in our favor.

of results in previous fights. Which is why we're worried.

They're based on some concocted narrative about previous fights.

Needless to say, we'll continue to disagree on that point. While you have your "spelunker" and "cave man" narrative, I see a pragmatist getting fairly good deals through. I understand the airy idea that "Obama always caves" is an article of faith among your clique, but I don't buy it. This deal is particularly favorable, given the circumstances.

So, I find your whole argument circular: you first concoct some narrative of past "caves," then dislike this deal based on that narrative and some speculation about the future. Since I don't agree with either your reading of the past (your premise), or (therefore) your speculation about the next fight, we'll not come together on that. For my money, such concocted narratives and such speculations (the whole core of such arguments is based on air) are a bad way to assess this particular deal. I'm happy enough to look just at the provisions and make a determination.

Have a good new year.

where the deals the repugs have swallowed are consistently worse than they would have agreed too, except that there is some hope on the horizon that they can really stick it to us next time. That "hope on the horizon" itself is a negotiation strategy, and in the long term (its becoming a bit more clear now) they will realize they have been strung along and played for fools.

On our side, it creates the baseless fear that Obama really wants to cut SS and slash medicare and so forth...but strangely enough this never seems to happen?

"If Obama stands his ground in that confrontation, this deal won’t look bad in retrospect. If he doesn’t, yesterday will be seen as the day he began throwing away his presidency and the hopes of everyone who supported him."



If—
BY RUDYARD KIPLING

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

progressive critics of this deal are splashing "If's" all over the board: finding little to critique in the actual provisions, they just play the if game on the other side, speculating about future policy fights and calling this deal bad based on that speculation. Indeed, that's the only cogent (albeit speculative) argument against the agreement that I've seen put forward.

The other "if" argument was, of course "If we go over the cliff, the House GOP will be magically forced to accede to our every demand!"

If, indeed.

Whether it be because they were invested in another candidate in 2008, or he makes them uncomfortable, or they don't like the cut of his suits, or they simply covet the struggle, whatever it is, they want him to fail.

Today it's the "if" game. Next week it will be some other manufactured outrage. They will never be convinced he's not a cretin no matter what he does. And honestly, who gives a fuck.

I have that poem in about three different books around the house, and haven't read it in years.

Thank you!

'Nuff said. So I guess we do a victory lap? 'Cause it could have been worse?

The fight goes on, of course.

But I am very, very thankful Obama is president and not Willard Etch-a-Sketch during these days of tense negotiations and gun-to-your-own-head brinkmanship.

2013 is shaping up to be a very bitter, sour year. And it's barely begun . . .

Despite his brilliance as an economist and writer he only makes $95k per year because every year he refuses to budge off his opening negotiating position of $20 million a year.

He is right in that the republicans being complete and total jackasses were the only thing that separated us from his cutting a lot worse deals.

But, this deal is solid on its own merit.

His only real gives here was the cutoff being 400/450,000 vs 250,000 and letting the payroll tax holiday expire.

He got a years extension on UEC that the Rs have been holding over his head, and got the modest increases in estate and dividend rates - the first pushback in those areas in a LONG time.

The overall revenue number is underwhelming, but I am assuming that is because the deal has not "cuts" to offset some financial commitments.

End of that day, it is a deal that is representative of the hand he held, IMO.

NOW, will he flat take a stand on the debt ceiling?

IDK.

But, that is seperate fromt this.

I think it is pretty clear that IF the asshats in the House will be willing to accept a deal, he WILL do something that involves cuts of some kind of SS or medicade.

No.

Kudos to Joe Biden who had to work late into the night with Yurtle, not a way to spend New Years Eve. And no one can argue that anyone making 8 grand a week,32 grand a month is not wealthy.

which is less than he would have gotten if he would simply have gone over the cliff and then said "The only bill I will sign is one where we give a temporary cut to all the income under $250K", which is what he campaigned on, and what we elected him to do.

He handed to Grover Norquist EXACTLY what Grover wanted -- a GUARANTEE of structural deficits as far as the eye can see. With this f---ed-up deal, we are guaranteed for the next generation that every 6 months the Republicans will come after more and more of our programs.

That is what Obama's brilliant 3-dimensional chess playing gave us.

Obama said he would only do 1 for 1 in any deal. Hope he sticks to it.

...that the problem with this "deal" is where the negotiation BEGAN--the far, far right/fascist-skewered national discussion (the only one permitted by the corpo-fascist press and this Diebold Congress) in which millionaires and billionaires are deciding how little the elderly can live on, and how broken "common good" services like education, postal delivery, parks, disaster relief, environmental protection, etc., can be, and how little the rich and the corporate rulers will have to pay in taxes for the Bush Junta's heinous wars, malfeasance and grand theft.

Your perspective--"He handed to Grover Norquist EXACTLY what Grover wanted -- a GUARANTEE of structural deficits as far as the eye can see"--is similar. Structurally, the fascists now own the future, with control of the national discussion to echo their insane economic nuking of our country using the Diebold Congress.

The main items that have been edited out of the national discussion are:

1. Who ARE these people--these Boneheads who represent NO ONE with incomes less than a million a year? How could a Congress be MORE unrepresentative of the majority of Americans?

2. NO elected official in this country--not even Obama--can prove that he or she was elected. That is our situation. Every state now uses 'TRADE SECRET' programming code--code that you and I are forbidden to review--to 'count' our votes. Half the states do NO AUDIT AT ALL (comparison of ballots to electronic totals); the other half do only a miserably inadequate 1% audit. And ES&S, a corporation with far right connections that would make your hair stand on end, and which bought out Diebold, controls 70% of these 'TRADE SECRET' vote rigging systems--systems DESIGNED for easy rigging. And how clever of those who control this system to help us forget Bush Junta crime, treason and grand theft--off they go into the corpo-fascist 'news' river of forgetfulness--by letting Obama win but shaving his margin (5% to 10%, at least) and inflicting him with the most unrepresentative Congress that ever ruled over us.

For starters, that's what's missing from our (or their) "national discussion." The whole political system--from the vote rigging coup d'etat, to the zillions in filthy campaign money, to Faux Newsification of the entire news corps--aggressively militates against the interests of most Americans. 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting (proliferated by the Anthrax Congress in the SAME MONTH as the Iraq War Resolution--Oct. '02) is just the icing on the cake--making the actual mechanism of the transfer of power (from the people to the oligarchs) EASY to rig, so that most people believe that the rest of us are idiots and elect idiots to Congress (also to governorships).

So the "discussion" STARTS with how we cannot afford worker-paid-for pensions, schools, environmental protection, etc. The banksters rip off trillions from our government treasury, private military war profiteers rip off more trillions, the uber-rich have been ripping us off for years, as well, and socking that money away, and NONE of these entities is going to pay for--or be accountable for, in any way--these huge thefts. WE are going to pay for Bush Junta (and, to some extent, Clinton 'neo-liberal') treason. (Clinton, we should recall, de-regulated the banksters and gave away the store on outsourcing and local/national control of trade policy. It ain't all Bush.)

That's another thing missing from our (their) "national discussion"--that there could be any alternative to Republican fascism or Democratic "neo-liberalism." (Say, FDR's "New Deal" or the leftist policies that have created prosperity and fairness in Latin American countries that have elected leftist governments).

What we are "given" as a "national discussion" has so many black holes in it, where information and alternative ideas should be, that we really don't know how to think about it. It is just SO off-base, SO skewered to the right, SO absurd. It is, as you say, Grover Norquist's "national discussion," not ours.

As you said it, this deal means that the fascists own the future -- to which I would add, for at least a generation. It will take us at least a generation to fight back at the state level to rein in the Gerrymandering. Until we do that, we will never be able to get the revenues back where they were for basically the 50 years of growth following WWII.

It is not just this one deal that did this. It was the Beltway, "third way" dems decision to oust Hoard Dean and drop the 50-state strategy. it was Obama's decision to form his own campaign company and basically campaign AGAINST the Democratic Party, splintering our limited resources. It was Obama's disposition to never really stand up for anything, thereby setting the expectation among Republicans that if they don't roll him completely, they have failed.

It is not one thing. This is just more of the same.

I am sure he accounted for the arithmetic you used to determine your point of view.

Krugman simply noted that the final tally is $600B. I pointed out that is a far cry from what Obama said he was going to do. Are we supposed to be happy that Obama didn't just renew 100% of the Bush plan?

Are we supposed to be happy that Obama locked us into structural deficits as far as the eye can see and only got a few TEMPORARY measures in return?

I don't think I'm saying anything different from Krugman.

He should have gone over and worked up from there.

It hurts me to say anything about our President but it seems like the same old shit. Sorry.

No cuts in benefits, modest tax increases for upper brackets, safety net services like federal extended unemployment left intact, nothing much done with military spending. I wish it was more definitive, i.e. no debt ceiling horsetrading looming, but this will do. Nothing dramatic, but for the people who could have been hurt won't be. And let's face it, we're talking drops in the bucket no matter what the final deal.

p.s. by "expectations" I mean it looks worse than it is; that's Obama's style I guess, keeping it under the radar, but experience has shown that it works out well for us 95%ers anyway.

There's such a thing as setting up the chessboard.

when the debt limit expires about March 2013.

There will be no Pentagon cuts, ever, while this one is President. If there was ever a chance to do that, it was now, and he didn't take advantage of that. But seriously, who ever thought he would?

for raising taxes on upper income brackets should be to begin the process of wealth redistribution back down the food chain by furthering greater tax reductions on middle incomes. Payroll taxes should remain at their current lower rate but should include larger contributions from higher incomes. Tax reductions of middle incomes, offset by increases in higher incomes will create demand for goods and services. Revenue increases from upper incomes should also be used to create demand. No deficit reductions should be considered that are not paid for by a decline in military spending and by increased tax revenue from a higher GDP. Since tax policy should be used primarily to aid in the determination of the kind of society we have, it is unfortunate that taxes on financial transactions were not considered as a means to reign in Wall Street's excesses, reduce its political influence and decrease its percentage of GDP.

Last edited Tue Jan 1, 2013, 04:08 PM - Edit history (1)

a windfall in estate tax exemptions. And let's get real. Billionaires shelter the vast majority of their income. It doesn't make a damn bit of difference what the "rate" is because the rate on sheltered income is zero percent. And there wasn't a thing in this entire damn package to deal with those abusive tax shelters that Obama was always talking about.

This was the time to do something about that. There will not be another chance in the next 4 years unless somehow we can knock off about 30 House teabaggers in the 2014 election.

is income sheltered by the wealthy, but the higher up the income ladder, the less income is derived from wages or salaried. Now that there has been an increase in capital gains it's likely that the tax shelter accountants will be working overtime in full loophole mode and that a swarm of lobbyists will be infesting the halls of Congress and buying tax exemption clauses of a paragraph that will be inserted into every thousand page bill that emerges.

You always look for the cheapest way to get your money unsheltered / transferred to heirs. When you have millions, you usually don't mind keeping in sheltered for a time, but eventually you want to get your money free and clear of taxes, so you look for ways to do that as cheap as possible. That is the essence of high-income "tax planning" aka legal tax evasion.

This monstrosity of a bill is like a balloon. You push down in one place and it pops up in another. The nominal tax rate, cap gains rate and dividend rates all went up a little for the rich. So they will just get more aggressive about sheltering until they can open up the next loophole. And the estate tax got opened up nicely for the 1% (not so much for the 0.1%)

isn't it interesting that they can all support "chained CPI", which says that if steak gets more expensive, you can switch to Tuna Helper? But they don't seem to be able to apply the same logic to the behavior of the super-rich. When one loophole gets more expensive, they switch to a different loophole. That $600 BN of revenue is bogus. I bet we won't see half of that.

We have no entitlement cuts and an extension of benefits for the unemployed.

All that and some folks here still think we should be outraged. Yeah, I'm not buying it.

This is a massive win for our side. If some people refuse to see that, well, that is their problem.

You sure as hell don't want to mention him often though because as it turns out, he makes a lot more sense than the theories the DLC/New Democrats support and it would start to out Obama for the corporate defender he truly is.

I'm still waiting for your explanation of why this is so bad if Sanders and Krugman disagree.

As a way to say, see your hero who spoke against this voted for the plan, attack him now. It's definitely an attempt to bait liberals into conflict.

Here's my view on the deal. There's not nearly enough revenue raised in it and really it works as a 2 month rental rather than an end-all bill because if you think Republicans give a fuck about defaulting on the debt, you have another thing coming. Some media will definitely rush to their aid and try to convince Americans that the crippling of American Financial Institutions is a good thing or that we should turn our blame on Obama's spending for why we even need to raise the debt ceiling at all (this WORKED last time and even though the GOP's petulant whining made our credit rating fall, they pinned that to Obama successfully during this last election cycle).

I know we think we can play chicken with them in February, but chicken works only if the other side is rational enough to care about the vehicle coming at them from the other side. I'm not sure this group cares. Worse I'm not sure most Americans are educated enough to understand how the debt ceiling works and will pin it on Obama and Dems, which will hurt in 2014.

There are positives in the new deal. Middle Class Tax Extensions, EIC is saved, UE benefits extended, though Robert Reich was right to call out the hypocrisy of the tax extensions for the poor/middle class only getting a 5 year reprieve while tax cuts for the rich are permanent. I don't like that the uber-rich get to skate on Capital Gains which is where most of their income is derived. $400,000-450,000 is really too low (I wish I was in that supposed "Middle Class" bracket) but I can accept it as part of the compromise.

I'm not 100% against the deal. The more I think about it, the more I think going over the cliff and then bringing back Middle Class Tax Cuts, EIC, UE Benefits, Military Spending, Pell Grant Funding as an individual bill for an up or down vote would have killed Republicans because they would have basically had to tell their constituents, "Sorry I don't give a fuck about you. Only my rich friends" to their faces basically. But even there, would they care about that? Redistricting has made them very safe and comfortable in their crazy.

"I know we think we can play chicken with them in February, but chicken works only if the other side is rational enough to care about the vehicle coming at them from the other side."

This is and has been the problem all along. They are not rational.

I am afraid that until they are rational, or until they are relegated to zero ability to affect progress of legislation, we are going to have to fight political holding actions against them. Its a victory when no entitlements are cut and its a major victory when any kind of tax increase is made on the highest income folks. We got both of those in the deal.

Congress passed Ryan's budget which wipes out everything we hold near and dear. The Senate passed a decent budget which the House refused to take up. Then everybody sat on their asses for a year and a half while the fiscal cliff got closer and closer and closer.

Obama finally got pissed at every fucking body. I don't blame him. He gave his last best offer in the summer of 2011. They turned it down. So, to jump start things he offered some stuff that would piss off the left. Sure enough, it got things going. But boehner turned that down too, as Obama knew he would. The House tea party will not deal with a black man. If y'all don't understand that you don't understand anything. Seriously, people, open your damn eyes. How many statistics do you need to see? How many effigies do you need to see of Obama in tea party yards? How many "you lie" congressmen do you need to hear in the SOTU before you finally get it?

When Obama pokes Congress with a stick, both parties, it is because he's fucking tired of everybody doing nothing. Sure enough, it was poking The Left that got this ball rolling. And we didn't end up giving up chained CPI did we? Nope. Because it was the goddamned STICK poking The Left, not a carrot for The Right.

I swear to God Almighty, some folks... shakes head...

I mean really frustrated, when according to your own logic the response is part of the plan?

I think if you really and truly believed all of this stuff then you would be smugly smiling at the reactions of the left, even encouraging them to move events as planned instead of getting all upset, arguing, trying to get folks in line with the message de jour, lashing out at the "disloyal", or certainly explaining shit ever because if you are believed by the left or the right the game can't work. If the left stops reacting something may well slip and if the right catches wind they build up as much bait on the hook as they possibly can (especially if the left is passive or waiting and seeing) and just take it.

Day to day behavior of the folks that promote these mythologies does not reconcile with actual belief in them but rather a constant demand to silence, out shout, out frame, or just plain old out circle the wagons via hook or crook any contrary discussion seemingly as a defense for cognitive dissonance.

If this is actually some high dimensional chess stuff, I'm happy to play my role in the dance. Such things are beyond my meager capacities, thus I must but act and react as dictated by the role of my humble piece.

When prodded, I come growling with fangs bared for blood. I bring as many with me as I can, the chess master has anticipated this and will use that rabid energy for the greater good. I cannot injure him, he has by definition anticipated my simple moves and in fact has sewed them into the fabric of his grand design.

You either believe your story or you don't. I don't think most really do, the behavior and especially the emotion don't mesh with the model.
Especially when you are just talking Congressional Democrats it seems silly, poke them to get things going? What were they doing or not doing to keep things from "getting going"? What did he get them to do or stop doing?
Never another election and still playing false equalivency and running from Democrats almost as much as TeaPubliKlans. For what? What is the endgame here?

because I have enough sense to recognize it for what it is. Get off your asses and get to fucking work for a goddamned change. And before the last motherfucking second would be nice and don't make me stop this motherfucking car.

And, of course, it is all for show in the end, isn't it? Because Eric Cantor is really hoping Speaker Boehner will put the bill before the House as is, just so Cantor can call him a traitor to the conservative cause, thereby wresting the speakership from Boehner on the 3rd of January. And, believe it or not, we need Boehner. So, this bill will not pass unless Cantor relents. It all rests in Cantor's hands. Now, what do you think will happen?

The Senate says it is done. Now, tell me again just who has given up what to whom? Do you see why I never get excited about much of anything except the gamesmanship? The moves are fascinating. But until a bill is agreed to by both houses I pretty much watch the plays.

I work for candidates. Hard. I let my representatives know what I think. I occasionally argue here. But not much, except to remind people about the intricate moves that go on behind the scenes. People tend to joke about it. It's no joke. It's deadly serious this time. Ezra Klein says if we go off the cliff the economy contracts by $800bn and we go into a recession. If the debt ceiling isn't raised we go into a depression. I think he's a brilliant man. I would have taken this deal.

"Day to day behavior of the folks that promote these mythologies does not reconcile with actual belief in them but rather a constant demand to silence, out shout, out frame, or just plain old out circle the wagons via hook or crook any contrary discussion seemingly as a defense for cognitive dissonance"

YOU NAIL THEM!!

bodes very badly for the confrontation looming in a few weeks over the debt ceiling."

Permanent tax cuts for the criminal class in exchange for temporary relief for Main Street, and the next round is right around the corner...

Have left DU or something, because they are in the minority here.

Mostly cheering from partisan Dems. I don't know how liberal folks here believe themselves to be, but...

do they measure NPR, or CNN as the benchmark for liberalism? ACA? There's a liberal bill for you.

One of my MAJOR complaints with Obama is NOT where he ended up.

No, worse than that. It is where he STARTED.

As Krugman writes "Obama wasn’t going to let all the Bush tax cuts go away in any case; only the high-end cuts were on the table."

My position is, and always has been, that the country would be better off if ALL of the Bush tax cuts had gone away.

Obama COULD have let that happen, but he CHOSE not to. Not because of Republicans, but because of his own perfidity.

perfidity meaning "breach of faith, treachery"

So, Obama started from a point where he made huge concessions to the Republicans and the rich. Anything better was NOT "on the table".

Then he made even more concessions.

And in return he got - unemployment benefits.

The expiring tax cuts were a sword of Damocles hanging over the Republicans heads. Something which could have been used to protect the big three in future debt ceiling negotiations or that would eliminate future debt ceiling negotiations.

Instead of getting something for his hostages, Obama just snatched the sword away so he can head into February with no leverage. Unless the threat of default is some sort of leverage. It was not worth much in the last round.