ah yes, the liberal media….

Steve Benen: The very first question in this morning’s White House press conference was pretty discouraging:

“On your jobs bill, the American people are sick of games – and you mentioned games in your comments. They want results. Wouldn’t it be more productive to work with Republicans on a plan that you know could pass Congress as opposed to going around the country talking about your bill and singling out – calling out Republicans by name?”

Towards the end of the event, another reporter asked the nearly identical question…. these questions make it seem as if it’s incumbent upon President Obama to change strategies – stop taking a compelling message to the public, stop trying to create conditions that would pressure Congress to do the right thing, and start asking Republicans if they might please consider working with him on some half-measures that probably wouldn’t do much good, at their convenience, if they don’t mind.

Have we not already been through this? The president has pleaded with congressional Republicans to work with him on good faith …. It’s proven to be pointless …. As he said this morning, “I’m also dealing with a Republican Majority Leader who said that his number-one goal was to beat me – not put Americans back to work, not grow the economy, not help small businesses expand, but to defeat me….”

…… And some White House political reporters want to know why Obama isn’t trying to negotiate with those bent on destroying his presidency? Seriously?

Full post here

‘don’t call it a compromise’

Steve Benen: ….. I’ve seen several reports on the debt-ceiling framework describe it as a “compromise” between Republicans and Democrats. That’s far too generous a term. Is this a deal? Sure. Is it an agreement? Absolutely. Can it fairly be characterized as a “compromise”? Not at all.

Republicans threatened to crash the economy, on purpose, unless a series of radical demands were met. Democrats made an effort to lessen those demands and make them less painful than intended. The result, not surprisingly, is rather ugly, which is to be expected.

The debt-reduction framework isn’t a compromise; it’s a ransom. If one were to draw up two lists – one with all the concessions Democrats made, the other with the concessions the GOP made – the one-sided image would be striking. Of course, that’s what happens when one party has a gun to the head of its hostage – in this case, the nation and its economy – and the other party wants to prevent their rivals from pulling the trigger.

…. what’s the less-bad news? There are a few noteworthy angles: (1) if the trigger kicks in, Medicaid and Social Security would be walled off and protected…. (2) triggered cuts for the 2012 fiscal year are practically non-existent, so it won’t hurt the economy in the short term; (3) a surprising amount of the overall deal targets the bloated Pentagon budget, which makes more painful domestic cuts less necessary; (4) there won’t be another debt-ceiling fight until 2013, giving the GOP one fewer hostages to grab for a while. And (5) if the deal passes, there will be no calamity this week, and everyone lives to fight another day.

….. there’s nothing in this deal to promote economic growth and nothing to create jobs … That Republicans wanted to take a huge step backwards, and Democrats negotiated to make it a more modest step backwards is cold comfort.

The Senate is likely to vote on the deal as early as this afternoon, and passage appears likely. The House vote may come tonight, and the outcome in the lower chamber is very much in doubt.

Full post here

‘compromise’

This brilliant Balloon Juice post calls to mind this March 2011 video again

Dennis G (Balloon Juice): Compromise. That word in the title is a dirty word to many. It seems to put teabaggers and firebaggers in a suicidal rage and can make partisans of all stripes a wee bit queasy. And yet, compromise is at the heart of our system of government. All progressive progress since 1776 has come through a series of hard and often bitter compromises. To reject the very idea of compromise is to reject the idea that Government by the people, of the people and for the people is a good thing. Because there are a lot of us with many different views and ideas of how to move forward. Some of these ideas are good. Some bad. Quite a few are horrible. Some only improve when tested against other ideas. The best ideas are tested by compromise and improve over the years.

Of course everything I just wrote is heresy if you view compromise as an evil in and of itself.

This is especially true if you’ve narrowed your political world view to the lens of a favorite single issue (or two) and force all of your thinking and reactions through the force rigidity that their talking points demand. If that is how you view the world then the notion of compromise is simply vile. Now, some would argue that this view of compromise as the great evil is evenly distributed between the left and the right or between Democrats and Republicans. That is, of course, pure bullshit. Yes, the Left/Democrats have their Firebaggers, but these folks are a tiny grifter minority whose main function seems to be to lighten the wallets of the gullible. Most Democrats view compromise the way Teddy Kennedy viewed it – as the best way (and the only way) to get things done….

Full post here

Thank you gobrooklyn

‘opposition to a deal with obama creates problems for gop’

LA Times: As the debt ceiling debate enters its final stages, House Republicans face increasing political isolation in their opposition to sweeping budget reforms that President Obama has pushed for and polls show most Americans now prefer.

Republican resistance to compromise has turned a significant bloc of voters against them, according to several new polls, and has frustrated members of their own leadership as well as establishment GOP figures.

…  House Republicans remain the key obstacle to passing a debt ceiling increase and avoiding a possible federal default after Aug. 2. Their strict adherence to a no-new-taxes pledge all but rules out consideration of a larger agreement on deficits and the debt ceiling. Their position is reinforced by the fear that “tea party” groups will mount primary challenges against many Republicans who vote for anything that could be characterized as a tax increase.

… Boehner, at the center of negotiations with the White House over a sweeping deficit-reduction deal, has had to spend much of the last several days trying to get his members to lower their expectations and ease their hostility to a compromise.

Full article here

Thanks Tally

‘lincoln sells out slaves!’

On March 8th 2011 President Obama took questions from a group of Boston Area College Democrats, Republicans and Independents after his speech at Tech Boston Academy in Dorchester, MA.

Thanks Meta

‘all of modern politics in one chart’

Mother Jones

Thank you Meta

here we go again….

Think Progress: This morning, Fox News hosted Rep. Allen West to talk about the budget cuts that the Tea Party wants. In order to frame the discussion as supporting West’s position, which is anti-compromise, the right-wing network cited a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll that it claimed showed that most Americans do not want the Republicans to compromise. Host Martha MacCallum claimed the poll showed that “56 percent of Americans say that [Republicans] should stick to their positions.” Watch it:

The problem with the poll that Fox cited is that it doesn’t say anything like what they claim it does. In fact, it appears that they actually switched the numbers around. The poll in question does find that 56 percent of respondents do not want to see the GOP compromise, but the question was directed to self-identified Republicans — meaning that Fox essentially took the number for Republicans and claimed that it represented all Americans:

But hey, it’s hardly the first time Fox reversed poll results to fit its agenda – here

‘you know, 2010 wasn’t a bad year for obama’

Steve Kornacki (Salon): It would be wrong to say that 2010 was a resounding success for Barack Obama … but while 2010 provided plenty of reasons for his allies to doubt him, the bigger story of the year was how much Obama was able to accomplish…

…..Nothing better illustrated this than the last two months of the year, after Democrats suffered massive election losses …. the last Democratic president to withstand such a midterm drubbing, Bill Clinton, had no idea how to respond …. but Obama barely skipped a beat. He acknowledged that the election had been a “shellacking,” then enjoyed some of the most productive weeks of his presidency to date.

…..Tax compromise …. it’s not surprising that the initial outrage of elite liberal opinion-shapers didn’t trickle down to rank-and-file liberals. As the details of Obama’s tax compromise spread, in fact, polls showed wide support for it – even among Democrats, and even among self-identified liberal Democrats. Most liberals, it seems, didn’t think that the president had sold them out at all.

There was even more reason for liberals to reach that conclusion as December wore on. By agreeing to terms with the GOP on taxes, Obama ratcheted up the pressure on the Senate’s few moderate Republicans to break with their colleagues on several big ticket items…..

….Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell … here, too, Obama’s long game came in to play: Liberals and gay rights advocates had railed throughout his presidency that he was willing only to pay lip service to the cause of DADT repeal. Actually, though, he was being wisely patient, winning over helpful support from military leaders by refusing to rely on an executive order or the courts and commissioning an exhaustive Pentagon study on the effects of repeal. That report’s release, cleverly timed for the start of the lame duck session, utterly eviscerated every reasonable-seeming concern that opponents of DADT repeal had been touting….

…. the last two months should give those who would cry “betrayal!” pause. Obama demonstrated in 2010 that he is still committed to doing much of what he set out to do – and that he’s still capable of accomplishing a lot of it.

Full article here

‘the liberal backlash that isn’t’

In the wake of his “cave” on taxes, a new poll finds that among liberals Barack Obama is … still wildly popular

Salon (Steve Kornacki): As one prominent liberal after another cried “betrayal!” over President Obama’s tax cut deal last week, I cautioned against reading too much into it: One of the most underappreciated stories of Obama’s tenure has been the consistent disconnect between elite liberal opinion about the president and the view of rank-and-file liberals.

That point is more evident than ever today, with the release of a new Washington Post/ABC News poll — conducted late last week and over the weekend, as the supposed liberal backlash against the deal was at its peak — that shows Obama’s approval rating with liberal Democrats sitting at 87 percent.

That’s essentially where it’s been all year; it represents a statistically microscopic decline from where he stood with liberal Democrats in the last WaPo/ABC survey, taken about six weeks ago. Among all Democrats, Obama’s approval rating in the new survey sits at 79 percent — again, pretty much exactly where it’s been all year. As has been the case throughout his presidency, Obama’s problem among Democrats — to the extent he has one at all — is with self-described moderates and conservatives in the party.

…this is hardly the first time that elite liberal voices have branded Obama a sellout — remember last September, when Keith Olbermann suggested that Obama could face a serious 2012 primary challenge if a public option wasn’t included in the final healthcare bill? Those eruptions all failed to manifest themselves in polls of rank-and-file Democrats, and it’s likely this one will, too.

the silent majority speaks up!

Just in case you missed Carol’s comment here she has set up a petition at this site, if you would like to sign it.