He's the best at going head to head with the righties.

Nothing new there with Thom Hartman though. Maybe the guy he was debating learned something about knowing U.S. economic history. He seemed pretty clueless about what went on prior to the time he reached voting age, and had nothing to offer other than a few very broad generalities and right wing talking points. As someone taking an introduction to microeconomics course, I'm not exactly shocked though. My class textbook has a couple charts from the heritage foundation, poorly explained graphs, and gives incredibly simplistic analysis while providing an excessive amount of useless information. God it's a pain to slog through

It will scare people. A lot. Many will reason that if Romney were president, Congress and the White House could agree and the crisis would be averted.

I think if Romney wins Obama shouldn't cause all that trouble for just 20 days.

The Republicans and Democrats both agreed to it to force the parties to compromise on a fiscal plan. Now the Rethugs are trying to sneak out of the agreement.

A few percentage points isn't dramatic.

What's dramatic are peoples reactions and the media's inflating the situation.

significance will be done in the next Congress.

Among other things payroll taxes will increase, so millions of people who have had their mid-wage jobs replaced by low-wage jobs will see a further hit in January's paychecks. When they do their taxes millions more will find that they now owe an Alternative Minimum Tax that will take thousands of dollars from the same or slightly less income than they had last year, income they owed none or no tax on.

And two million people who are getting unemployment, and spending the majority of it in our communities, will see those checks stop. Dead. Along with the jobs they support now. Along with the jobs that the defense spending used to support, and none of them have any place to go in an economy that has millions already looking at too few jobs.

All while we continue buying $40 billion/mo of mortgage-backed securities to protect their value, and thus the assets, of the rich and truly wealthy who invest in them.

The commentator has a point in that the hyperbole is useless, but he shouldn't minimize the pain and potential backlash that could come like a tsunami if this occurs without any changes, whether it is likely or not.

The exact opposite happened.. America went on to experience the Greatest Economic Expansion in History....Remember when Clinton took office our economy was in almost the same shape it was in when Obama took office...Remember Clinton ran on "It's the Economy Stupid"

Dang, I ain't even heard the Lyin' King be that repugnant. He at least acknowledges they exist, even when he wants to cut their money off.

Nice post...cya

you have to be prepared to risk a collision when you're playing chicken with someone insane over something as important as this.

After this extreme election forcing him to become more demanding of his own views, ill bet hell be ready to play hard ball and take us over the cliff if the right tries to blackmail him once again. The fiscal cliff basically gives the Democrats everything they want and more. It's much harder on the right and destroys about everything they've been fighting for including massive cutbacks on military spending.

Can't continue down the current path that Republicans have put us on of massive tax cuts for the wealthy. Deficit spending is not infinitely sustainable. Tax hikes have to be part of the solution, and the only way to do that is to force the Republican's hand or wait for a true supermajority with none of the Conservative Democratics, or change filibuster rules (which brings its own set of political problems next time Republicans win majorities) and I don't really see that happening anytime soon.