Katrina vanden Heuvel - Obama: On the way to a failed presidency?

Obama: On the way to a failed presidency?
By Katrina vanden Heuvel WashPost Tuesday, December 7, 2010 Ronald Reagan famously quipped that the Democratic Party left him before he left the party. Like many progressive supporters of Barack Obama, I'm beginning to have the same feeling about this president. Consider what we've seen since the shellacking Democrats took in the fall Elections. On Afghanistan, the administration has intimated that the 2011 pullout date is "inoperable," with the White House talking 2014 and Gen. David H. Petra...

Barack Obama And The Republicans Take The First Step To Kill Social Security As We Know It
from Hillbilly Report Tue Dec 07, 2010 Barack Obama negotiated with the Republicans to extend the Bush era, 2001 and 2003, Tax Cuts for the rich, click here and here to read more about those tax cuts, but what's going unnoticed by most people in this deal with Republicans is the Social Security funding cut for a year to put extra money into The Economy (Barack Obama just gave the Right Wing neocons what they've been wanting for many years). I suggest this is the beginning of the end of Social...

In Obama Tax Plan, Boost for Job Creation - David Leonhardt
A year ago, President Obama and the Democrats made the mistake of assuming that an Economic Recovery was under way. This week’s deal to extend the Bush Tax Cuts shows that the White House’s top priority is avoiding the same mistake again — even if it has to upset many fellow Democrats in the process. Mr. Obama effectively traded Tax Cuts for the affluent, which Republicans were demanding, for a second stimulus bill that seemed improbable a few weeks ago. Mr. Obama yielded to R...

Harry Reid gambles that his online poker bill can slip through with Obama's controversial tax cut measure
Wow, what are the odds of catching Nevada Sen. Harry Reid with a smile on? About as good as anyone's chances of winning big playing online poker. The new 71-year-old Harry is happy because he won a fifth Senate term last month in his bid to outlast the late Robert Byrd and become the longest-serving member of Congress in American history. That is scheduled to occur in about 29 years when Harry turns 100, barring an election defeat. And the way the current leader of the slightly smaller Dem...

Senator DeMint Will Vote Against Filibuster Bush Tax Cuts Deal
He’s raising an objection over the fact that the Unemployment Benefits expansion included in the bill is financed by Deficit spending, that the extension of the Bush Tax Cuts aren’t permanent and that Senator Reid is attempting to attach Legislation to it that would legalize online gambling. “It wouldn’t hurt my feelings at all if we pushed this whole things into next year,” says DeMint. And it’s hard to disagree with his position (outside of his objection to ...

Dick Durbin's take on the Bush Tax Cuts
Thank you for contacting me in support of extending all of the 2001 and the 2003 Bush Tax Cuts. I appreciate hearing from you. As we struggle to recover from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, I am committed to getting this economy back on track and working for all Americans. I support extending the current Tax Rates for individuals who earn less than $200,000 or families earning less than $250,000. These are the people who need our help the most. This would ensure that 98 p...

Two Major Conservative Obstacles Emerge To Tax Cut Compromise
Two key obstacles emerged Tuesday night to the passage of President Obama's Tax Cut Compromise with the GOP. Except this time they come from the right: The influential anti-tax group Club for Growth and conservative Kingmaker Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) both came out in opposition to the agreement, threatening the breadth of Republican support for the plan. "This is bad policy, bad politics, and a bad deal for the American People," said Club President Chris Chocola in a statement. "The plan would ...

Tina Dupuy: Out of Ideas? Call for a 'Simple Solution'
Americans are now in a Global Economy. We're citizens of the world. We're engaged in delicate Diplomacy made all too apparent by Wikileaks. Our markets are complex. Foreign markets are complex. Economics are complex. Communications are complex. In the last century we went from the horse and buggy to the Y2K buggy. Over 300 million people live in this country. A collection of recent and not-so-recent immigrants (and some native peoples) with many different ideas brought together in a participat...

Rep. Pete Stark: Why This Tax Compromise Is Wrong for the Middle Class
This week, the president and the GOP announced a $900 billion Deficit-financed package that includes, among other measures, an extension of Tax Cuts for Millionaires and Billionaires. After the past decade, we knew that Republicans were never serious about deficit spending. They added Trillions to the deficit with two wars and the original Bush tax cuts. Republicans made the Tax Cuts expire at the end of 2010 because they tried to hide the real long-term costs -- which is the reason we're in t...

Left Out
I missed the president's Press Conference yesterday wherein he showed his frustration with the left for their lack of appreciation for all he's done for them, and I missed the live broadcast of Keith Olbermann's Special Comment wherein he answered back. I'm not dismissing the anger that a number of people on the left are feeling over the Compromise the president got for the Tax Cuts; they feel as if they're the ones who got him elected in the first place, and this is the thanks they get? A tax ...

Tax cut? What tax cut?
Over the first 18 months of his presidency, Barack Obama cut taxes — 25 different taxes, in fact — for 95% of Taxpayers. Yet when queried by pollsters on whether the president had "increased taxes for most Americans, decreased taxes for most Americans, or … kept taxes the same," 44% of respondents said taxes went up, while 46% said taxes did not change. Now the president is making the same mistake again: cutting taxes in a way almost no one will notice and some may remember as ...

Molloy: Tax cuts for wealthy seal the (raw) deal
Throw down some beats, please. Sen. Mitch McConnell and Rep. John Boehner must be ready to shimmy after President Obama's Compromise to extend the Bush Tax Cuts for the rich. Call it the tax-break dance. And set it to a James Brown soundtrack: "I got mine and don't worry 'bout his Get on up and shake your moneymaker! Yeah, shake your moneymaker!" Yep, individuals who make over $200,000 a year won't have to give that extra 4% to Uncle Sam. That includes all the Billionaires on the Forbes 400...

Andy Borowitz: Wealthiest .0000001% Hail Tax Deal
Geneva (The Borowitz Report) - President Obama's deal to extend the Bush Tax Cuts for the rich drew rave reviews today from the wealthiest .0000001% of Americans, who pronounced the deal "a total home run." "When we first heard about the deal, we were like, this is too good to be true," said multibillionaire Thurston Howell IV, a spokesman for the Richest .0000001%. "But when our butlers read the plan aloud to us during the cocktail hour, we were incredibly stoked." The 29 plutocrats who make ...

Betrayals
On Afghanistan, the administration has intimated that the 2011 pullout date is "inoperable," with the White House talking 2014 and Gen. David H. Petraeus suggesting decades of occupation. On Bipartisanship, the president seems to think that cooperation requires self-abasement. He apologized to the obstructionist Republican leadership for not reaching out, a gesture reciprocated with another poke in the eye. He chose to meet with the hyper-partisan Chamber of Commerce after it ran on...

Obamas Tax Cuts Surrender All Part Of His Plan, Or Something
Although his liberal supporters are furious about the decision, President Obama’s willingness to extend all of the George W. Bush-era Tax Cuts is part of what White House officials say is a deliberate strategy: to demonstrate his ability to Compromise with Republicans and portray the president as the last reasonable man in a sharply partisan Washington. The move is based on a political calculation, drawn from his party’s midterm defeat, that places a premium on winning back independe...

Obama’s Tax Cuts Surrender All Part Of His Plan, Or Something
Apparently, it has nothing to do with having no choice in breaking yet another promise to his unhinged rich people hating base: Obama's Tax Cut extension part of strategy to show bipartisanshipAlthough his liberal supporters are furious about the decision, President Obama's willingness to extend all of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts is part of what White House officials say is a deliberate strategy: to demonstrate his ability to Compromise with Republicans and portray the president as the last ...

Obamas Tax Cuts Surrender All Part Of His Plan, Or Something
Although his liberal supporters are furious about the decision, President Obama’s willingness to extend all of the George W. Bush-era Tax Cuts is part of what White House officials say is a deliberate strategy: to demonstrate his ability to Compromise with Republicans and portray the president as the last reasonable man in a sharply partisan Washington. The move is based on a political calculation, drawn from his party’s midterm defeat, that places a premium on winning back independe...

For Obama, Tax Deal Is a Back-Door Stimulus Plan
By DAVID LEONHARDT WashPost WASHINGTON A year ago, President Obama and the Democrats made the mistake of assuming that an Economic Recovery was under way. This week’s deal to extend the Bush Tax Cuts shows that the White House’s top priority is avoiding the same mistake again — even if it has to upset many fellow Democrats in the process. Mr. Obama effectively traded Tax Cuts for the affluent, which Republicans were demanding, for a second stimulus bill that seemed improbable a few weeks

Obama-GOP tax deal faces fight in Congress
(12-08) 04:00 PST Washington - -- President Obama's tax bargain with Republicans is in effect a roughly $800 billion second stimulus, chiefly of Republican design, and a rightward lurch by the White House after Democrats' historic election losses last month. Republicans embraced the deal, which focuses almost exclusively on keeping in place Tax Cuts including those approved by President George W. Bush, but the immediate question Tuesday was whether it can pass the lame-duck Congress. The House...

Joe Biden to Address Fuming House Dem Caucus
Biden to address fuming House Dem Caucus The Hill Vice President Biden will address a fuming House Democratic Caucus on Wednesday, a day after lawmakers roundly panned a Tax Cut deal the White House negotiated with Republicans. At a Caucus meeting Tuesday night, more than a dozen House Democrats stood up to criticize President Obama’s tax proposal, complaining that the administration caved too quickly on party priorities while shutting out Democratic lawmakers, sources in the room said. Of...

Is the tax cut deal the best Obama could do?
Were no better. I said that yesterday and I believe it. A Tax Cut deal that hardly cuts any new taxes, standing instead as a renewal of the status quo with a few accents stapled on for good measure. Today however, after a somewhat impassioned defense of moderacy, prudence, and a rather raw explanation of the political realities facing this President I feel the debate may need to be re-framed. Though we are no better are we worse for this Compromise then we would be if nothing had occurred? And c...

Testy Obama fires back at Democrats over tax deal
By Steve Holland and Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 8, 2010 7:00am EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A testy President Barack Obama on Tuesday expressed frustration at his own Democrats for attacking him over his tax-cut deal with Republicans, who he called uncompromising "hostage takers." Obama found himself in an unusual position a day after sealing a major tax-cut agreement -- praised by Republican opponents and denounced by Liberal Democrats who felt he violated a pledge that helped get ...

The Only Way Obama Can Win in 2012
While tout Washington is furiously debating the deal between President Obama and the Republican congressional Leadership, it’s time to look ahead. Assume that some form of the deal survives the cross-fire and is enacted into law. What then for the president? There’s one thing we already know for sure: the agreement will light the fuse on a bomb timed to explode at the height of the 2012 Presidential Campaign. Unfortunately for Obama, taxation is an issue on which Republicans have lo...

Just Do It
The fabulous Baker boy is right, the president's tax deal should be supported. Readers of my columns -- all ten of you -- know that I hold no brief for the Obama Administration. Unfortunately, the blossoming left opposition to the proposal is founded on dumb, retrograde economics. I would concede one exception to the previous statement, to be noted below. The provisions in a nutshell are an extension of all Bush Tax Cuts, a temporary reduction in the Payroll Tax, a one year extension of unempl...

Obama Kicks Door Down After Speech: Spoof Shows Real Sentiment (VIDEO)
Creating the now Viral Video titled “Obama Kicks Door” spoofing the President’s reaction after extending the Bush Tax-Cuts, Jay Leno’s Tonight Show obviously faked the video but nailed the President’s reaction to the Compromise. Get the full story, plus pictures and the Viral Video below! Reneging on one of his core policy promises from his Presidential Campaign, the President announced last week that the Bush-Era tax-cuts for the wealthy will be extended...