WaPo's Pearlstein impressed with Obama's collapse on tax deal

Sounds like there's been a gas leak in his office since he went on praising BP's cleanup effort. It's not really "compromise" or "finding common ground" when everything has already been pushed so far to the right and the decision is to the right. It's called "caving in" or "weakness" or "rudderless" out in the real world. Pearlstein used to have some decent columns but he's been going downhill quickly. Few really believe 2012 will be any easier for the White House to negotiate now that they've made it clear they will surrender before a fight. Pearlstein is really living deep inside the Beltway Bubble, much like the White House who repeats the same lines on both failures.

President Obama deserves credit for cutting a tax-cum-stimulus deal with Republican leaders that involved distasteful concessions on both sides. That's the difference between "finding common ground," which is easy, and real "compromise," which is harder and had fallen out of fashion. Now that the ice has been broken, maybe the next one will come a little easier.

It's also a good sign that the president has finally realized that the only way he is going to succeed is to force congressional Democrats to follow his lead rather than the other way around. If he'd done that earlier in his presidency, he wouldn't have found himself with his back against the wall after last month's drubbing at the polls. It's not just okay if some liberal Democrats in Congress feel they have to vote against a deal that requires many Republican votes for passage - it's actually a good thing. It means the president finally understands the difference between leading the country and leading his party.

Read the rest of this post...

Fox News guests agree that murder is best option for WikiLeaks

So do they also agree that anyone in the US government who spied on Americans should be murdered? How about those who leaked the Valerie Plame story? Any other enemies of the state? Kill them too, Robespierre? Or is that Stalin? What has happened to our country that it's so easy to talk about murdering someone on national TV because you don't like what the details have to say? WikiLeaks has not violated any specific law. Read the rest of this post...

DREAM Act passed in the House: 216 - 198

A win for basic justice in the House tonight!!! The DREAM Act passed. Roll call vote is here. Eight Republicans (Cao, Castle, Djou, L. Diaz-Balart, M. Diaz-Balart, Ehlers, Inglis, Ros-Lehtinen) voted yes while 37 Democrats voted no.

On to the Senate tomorrow, which, as we all know, is where good bills go to die.

Watching the debate tonight, it's pretty clear that Republicans hate immigrants as much, if not more, than the gays. Lots of vitriol spewed on the House floor.

Congrats to the DREAM Activists. Those kids are amazing. Read the rest of this post...

Did Wikileaks supporters just hack ABC News?

UPDATE: False alarm. ABC posted the page and didn't bother putting a title on it, or anything else. From digging around on their site I was able to find Jake Tapper's story about Palin being hacked, and a link to this page which shows what the hack looks like. Too good to be true, alas.
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Greg Mitchell just tweeted that we should all check out this ABC story about Sarah Palin under cyber attack from Wikileaks supporters. Well, it appears ABC's story is itself under cyber attack as well. Check it out:



You can click the image to see a larger version - check out what's on the screen instead of the video about Palin:



It's possible that this is simply ABC showing an image of Palin's site being hacked. But there's nothing else on ABC's page, no explanation, nothing - which makes me wonder if this isn't ABC's own video that's been hacked. Read the rest of this post...

74% of Obama contributors against tax deal with GOP

Hope-less.

The poll shows clearly that these contributors are deeply opposed (74%) to a deal with Republicans to extend the Bush-era tax breaks for those making over $250,000 a year. The depth of opposition to a deal is severe with former Obama contributors saying that they are less likely (57%) to support Democrats who support this deal in 2012.

A majority of the former Obama contributors surveyed also say that the President's deal also makes them less likely (51%) to contribute to his reelection campaign in 2012.

Read the rest of this post...

You can't DREAM if you can't hear

From Politico, Rep. Luis Gutierrez on the DREAM Act vote today:

“This is a very tailored and very structured piece of legislation,” said Gutierrez, who pointed out that beneficiaries would not receive Pell Grants, health care or other government assistance. “Nothing. Nothing but your own faith and your own determination and your own work to get you through school. Nothing but your own work and your own determination to join the military.

“And to pay the highest tax any one of us can pay — and that is the tax of our blood, of our life and our limb in defense of this nation.”

The irony of course is that Republicans, who constantly tout the virtues of self-improvement and individual responsibility, are completely opposed to providing the opportunity for immigrants to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, even if it's done with no hand from the government. To them, the children of hardworking immigrants who dared to cross the border will forever be defined by their parents' decision to bring them here illegally -- who cares if they've served in the military or earned a college degree? As compelling as Gutierrez's plea is, no doubt when the DREAM Act comes before the Senate, it will fall on deaf ears. Read the rest of this post...

Are Reid and Collins helping or hurting on DADT?

Things with DADT are moving fast. It may or may not come up today. The President is calling Senators. Senator Collins is negotiating with Senator Reid. It's been in flux all day. I've got the latest here. Read the rest of this post...

'Operation Payback' by online activists in support of Assange

Whoever that mysterious organization is (golly, who?) that has done their best to crash WikiLeaks may have misunderstood who they were battling. If corporate America is going to side with censorship, it's hard to feel sorry for them. Why do they have American democracy and prefer bullying Soviet Russia tactics? The same question should be asked of Joe Lieberman and the rest of the politicians who have made threats of violence against Assange.

WikiLeaks supporters struck back Wednesday at perceived enemies of the site and its jailed founder Julian Assange, launching hacker attacks against MasterCard, Swedish prosecutors, a Swedish lawyer and a Swiss group that froze Assange's bank account.

So-called "hacktivists" operating under the label "Operation Payback" claimed responsibility in a Twitter message for causing technological problems at MasterCard, which pulled the plug on its relationship with WikiLeaks on Tuesday.

MasterCard said it was "experiencing heavy traffic," but spokesman James Issokson told The Associated Press the company would not confirm whether WikiLeaks was involved. Issokson said MasterCard was trying to restore service Wednesday but was not sure how long that would take. The website's technical problems have no impact on consumers using credit cards, he added.

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Maddow on Obama's train-wreck press conference

Rachel Maddow takes on the Obama impromptu press conference (our coverage is here), and takes no prisoners. The blurb for this segment is "Obama lashes the left". Rachel lashes Obama, with his own words.



Some short comments of my own:

About that "public option" whining, Krugman noted today:

And beyond that, who are these purists? Yes, a few people on the left refused to support health reform over the lack of a public option — but not many. To the extent that Obama has had trouble selling that plan, “purists” weren’t a factor; his own lack of effective messaging was.

Lack of effective messaging — something John and Joe have been pointing out for at least a year.

About that "tough" press corps, like the known-right Chuck Todd (4:25 in the clip). Many commenters have noted that this is as tough as the press has been on a president in a long while. The reason seems obvious — they're playing a political version of Let's You and Him Fight. The "tough questions" seem designed to stimulate Obama's obvious, eager anger at the left, the goal being to damage the left (and Obama) even more.

About this: "The American people are on our side" (6:00 in the clip). Actually, no. Polling on tax cuts for Our Owners runs consistently negative. And even the Teabaggers love their Social Security. So where is that coming from? Personal animus seems the obvious choice.

And finally, "I'll take John Boehner at his word" (8:00). Really? Rachel handles that in the segment, but it was stunning to hear him say it. Whose life is he living?

Frankly, this deal, and this presser, feel like major turning points. Hard to tell about turning points until they're stuck in the rear view mirror. But still, I've had the feeling that this Lame Duck for the Ages would leave a very large mark, and I don't think, yet, I'm wrong. 2012 looms large.

GP

Update: Added link to support the point that polling does not support the president's tax "deal". Read the rest of this post...

TNR: Obama, the tax deal, and what it means for 2012

Noam Scheiber in TNR:

The way the president’s inner circle sees it, the re-election of Patrick—a longtime Obama pal and former client of his message guru David Axelrod and campaign manager David Plouffe—affirms the president’s bias against desperate reinventions. “[Patrick] may be a model for Obama in 2012,” says one strategist close to the White House. “Let them write you off for dead, say how stupid you are”—while you remind voters why they fell for you in the first place. So far, at least, the pundits are living up to their end of the bargain. The question is whether the president can live up to his."

Team Obama may also be insufficiently attentive to the left, which has erupted over the tax-cut deal. The Friday after the midterms, a senior administration official convened a meeting with representatives of several dozen prominent progressive organizations. When the meeting began at 9 a.m., the official announced the discussion would have to be quick as the White House needed the room by ten o’clock. “The White House is having a meeting with all its important allies, and the initial message is, ‘We couldn’t get a room for more than an hour,’ ” says one participant. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

Left uncorrected, these failings could unravel Obama’s re-election chances. To be sure, his approval rating is respectable given the economic climate, while the Republican primary will eventually serve up a handy conservative foil. Still, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario in which the president staggers into 2012.

Read the rest of this post...

Olbermann on the tax cut deal

Excerpt:

Mr. President, for these meager crumbs, you have given up costly, insulting, divisive, destructive tax cuts for the rich and you have given in to Republican blackmail which will be followed by more Republican blackmail. Of course, it's not just tax cuts for the rich that you've given up.

There is also your new temporary payroll tax holiday, establishing a precedent that the way money is pumped into Social Security should be negotiated and traded off and making it just that much easier to gut Social Security later.

And, oh by the way, in the middle of a crisis over making temporary Republican tax cuts permanent, you give the Republicans another temporary Republican tax cut that they can come back later to blackmail you into making permanent. Well, Sir, at least that's the end of it.

Except, of course, for the estate tax, what Republicans so happily call, "the death tax." Which will be reduced from its 2009 levels.

Huh?

This President negotiates down from a position of strength better than any politician in our recent history. It is too late now to go back and ask why the President, why the wobbly Democratic leadership, whiffed on its chance to force John Boehner to put his money where his mouth was. In September Boehner said if he had no other option, of course he would vote to extend tax breaks only for the middle class.

So the President and the Democrats gave him another option, naturally. But didn't extending the Bush Tax Cuts for the wealthy became necessary to get Republican support for extending the jobless benefits? Nonsense.

Five times in the last two years, the Republicans have gone along with extending those jobless benefits, and they've done it without being bribed with tax cuts for the rich. Even now Boehner's September confession, and the GOP's unwillingness to take the blame for killing off jobless benefits, offered an alternative blueprint for this President...

Yesterday I had an exchange with a very Senior member of this Administration who wanted to sell me on this deal. I pointed out that that was fine, except that — as I phrased it to him — "frankly the base has just vanished." "Well," he replied, "then they must not have read the details." There, in a nutshell, is this Administration. They didn't make a bad deal — we just don't understand it.

And of course, Mr. President how we totally betrayed your Administration by not concluding our prayers every night by saying "Thank you for preventing another Great Depression, you are entitled to skate along on your own wonderfulness indefinitely and if you get less than you could have on Health Care Reform or taxes, well, that'll be okay, we're happy to pay $10,000 for a $300 car because hey, it could've been $20,000, right? And because we only expect you to do one thing correctly during a presidency and you had pretty much cleared that obligation when it proved that you were, indeed, not John McCain."

We are very very sorry. In some sense, the Senior Member's remark about how we "did not read the details" is not utterly absurd. We have enabled this President, and his compromises-spinning-within-compromises. And now there are, finally, those within his own party who have said "enough." In the Senate, the Independent, Mr. Sanders has threatened to filibuster this deal. He deserves the support of every American in doing so, as does Mr. Conyers and Mr. McDermott and the others in the house. It is not disloyalty to the Democratic party to tell a Democratic president he is wrong; it is not disloyalty to tell him he is goddamned wrong.

This part sounds like a threat, either to support a primary challenge or simply to not support Obama's re-election:

It is not disloyalty to remind him that we are not bound to an individual. We are bound to principles. If the individual changes, or fails often and needlessly, then we get a new man. Or woman. None of that is disloyalty. It is self-defense. It is the acknowledgment that, as my hero Thurber wrote, you might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backwards.

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Senator Pryor will now vote for Defense Bill with DADT language

Posted this a few minutes ago at AMERICAblog Gay as "BREAKING" news. It is a major development. The Senate could take a vote on the Defense bill today. In September, Senator Pryor(D-AR) voted on the wrong side. Just last week, he told an Arkansas newspaper that he would not vote for any bill that repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell (while also noting his belief that being gay is a sin.) But, he's on board with DADT repeal now.

Here's the statement from Pryor's office:

On many previous occasions, I have said that I would oppose repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell until I had heard from our servicemen and women regarding this policy. I have now carefully reviewed all of the findings, reports, and testimony from our armed forces on this matter and I accept the Pentagon’s recommendations to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. I also accept the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs’ commitment that this policy can be implemented in a manner that does not harm our military’s readiness, recruitment, or retention. We have the strongest military in the world and we will continue to do so by ensuring our troops have the resources necessary to carry out their missions. Therefore, I support the 2011 Defense Authorization Act that passed the Senate Armed Services Committee and will support procedural measures to bring it to a vote this year.

We still need a couple of Republicans, but this feels like momentum. It's conceivable that all the Democrats could vote for cloture now. That puts enormous pressure on Senators Susan Collins and Scott Brown. This is their moment: Equality or some bogus procedural argument.

Hat tip, Brian Beutler and Igor Volsky. Read the rest of this post...

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Big day ahead. Looks like there could be a vote in the Senate on the Defense Authorization bill later today. That legislation, of course, includes the Don't Ask, Don't Tell compromise language. We learned about this development last night. I just hope this is part of a real strategy to pass the Defense Authorization, not to clear it from the calendar. And, I really hope everyone involved, from the White House to the Majority Leader to Senator Collins, are being honest brokers (especially Susan Collins. If she votes against us again, it will cement her legacy as a turncoat on equality.)

Also, both the House and Senate will vote today on the DREAM Act. It's hard not to be impressed by the DREAM activists. Many were at Netroots Nation. They're smart and fearless. Basically, these are kids who were brought to the United States when they were young. They were raised here -- and this is the only country they know. It's not their fault. Only Congress can help them. And, Congress should. In the Senate, Lugar is the cosponsor of the DREAM Act. He should bring along some other GOPers, several of whom have already voted for this legislation. The full target list is here.

So, Congress has a couple of opportunities to show whether they've got any decency or humanity left. I know, that's a lot to expect.

The President has a meeting with Polish President Komorowski. And, he's got a cabinet meeting. Besides that, he better be working the phones to make sure the Defense bill gets to 60.

So, stay tuned. It's could be a wild day. Read the rest of this post...

Ireland rolls out tax increases and welfare cuts

It's ugly, but there's a high likelihood Ireland won't be the only country to implement such harsh policies. The Guardian:

Ireland reluctantly began four years of tax rises and brutal cuts to social welfare after its parliament narrowly passed the harshest budget in the Republic's history.

As angry protests raged outside the Dáil, the country's finance minister Brian Lenihan announced that child benefit would be slashed, more workers taken into the tax bracket and petrol prices raised to save €6bn (£5bn) in the forthcoming year.

The country's opposition, trade unions and poverty campaign groups all lined up to condemn the budget, branding the swingeing cuts as the last act of a "puppet government" and a "frontal attack" on the poorest strands of society.

Read the rest of this post...

Senate could vote Wednesday on Defense bill with DADT language

Posted this news earlier tonight at AMERICAblog Gay, based initially on reporting from Roll Call.

Kerry Eleveld also filed a report with news that the White House is engaging:

Senate majority leader Harry Reid may bring to a vote on Wednesday the National Defense Authorization Act with “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal attached, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.

Democrats might make use of a narrow window of down time if the four bills scheduled for a vote Wednesday fail to garner the 60 votes necessary to proceed to debate. Those bills include a firefighters collective bargaining bill, the DREAM Act, a 9/11 firefighters health compensation measure, and a measure extending a one-time $250 payment to senior citizens. If all fail, the NDAA could be brought to a vote by sometime Wednesday afternoon.

The strategy is still preliminary but the source said the White House had begun to engage on the issue and President Barack Obama intends to make calls to key GOP targets.

That's the first time we've heard the news about Obama making calls. Makes this seem more real. And, by that, I mean the prospects for the vote seem real.

We need 60 votes. I hope all the key players are taking this seriously and being honest brokers -- that means, among others, the President, the Majority Leader and Senator Collins. This could be our last chance to end DADT for a long time. And, if it fails, there will be plenty of blame to go around. Read the rest of this post...