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MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Friday recommended that Republicans "walk out" of talks completely because President Barack Obama's first budget offer was "loaded with Democratic priorities," citing an imperfect memory of the way President Bill Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) harmoniously "worked together" to reach a deal in 1995.

On Thursday, Republicans aides circulated what they said was the first White House budget offer. It reportedly included $1.6 trillion in taxes, $400 billion in entitlement spending cuts and $200 billion in new stimulus of payroll tax cuts and an efforts to encourage homeowners to refinance. The White House also wants a debt limit increase as part of the deal to avoid the crisis that ended with U.S. credit being downgraded in 2011.

On MSNBC Friday morning, Scarborough said that he would have laughed out loud if he had been in the room when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was making the offer.

"I would have said, 'We're all busy people, this is a critical time, if you're going to come over here and insult us and intentionally try to provoke us, you can do that but I'm going back to work now,'" Scarborough explained. "And I'd walk out."

"Was it necessary for the president to be so proactive with something even The New York Times said was -- quote -- 'loaded with Democratic priorities' and really gave Republicans nothing?" the conservative MSNBC host wondered. "I think they were awfully reckless yesterday with this first offer."

"Look at the other side that they're dealing with," co-host Mika Brzezinski pointed out. "Look at who they're dealing with, many of the same people as the last four years. So, what would you do if you knew who you were up against? Would you come out there with something that was incredibly giving from the get-go?"

"My response to [House Speaker] John Boehner would be very simple, just stop talking to them," Scarborough opined. "Don't talk to them until they make a serious offer... I've got to say that I'm really stunned by what happened yesterday."

"I can tell you, it's not a hard ask, it's a partnership," he added. "And actually as much as Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich loathed each other at times, they worked together to deal with Republicans like myself on balancing the budget on the first time in a generation, balancing it four years for for the first time since the 1920s, paying down the national debt. And you know what? Newt Gingrich always had to fight us on his right flank and he and Bill Clinton sat in the White House and strategized."

In fact, the budget negotiations between Clinton and Gingrich were no where near as smooth and cordial as Scarborough remembers. After Clinton passed his 1993 budget (and tax increases) with no Republicans votes, Gingrich led a 1993 effort to impeach the 42nd president of the United States in the House of Representatives. Clinton later was forced to shut down government for a total of 28 days in 1995 and 1996 over drastic cuts to spending on Medicare, education, public health and the environment. In the end, the parties did work together to create four consecutive balanced budgets for the first time since the 1920s. Forcing the government shutdown, however, marked the beginning of the end of Gingrich's career as Speaker.

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein noted on Thursday that the first White House budget proposal was a signal that President Barack Obama would no longer begin negotiations by conceding to Republican demands as he had done so many times during his first term.

"Previously, Obama’s pattern had been to offer plans that roughly tracked where he thought the compromise should end up," Klein wrote. "Perhaps the key lesson the White House took from the last couple of years is this: Don’t negotiate with yourself. If Republicans want to cut Medicare, let them propose the cuts. If they want to raise revenue through tax reform, let them identify the deductions. If they want deeper cuts in discretionary spending, let them settle on a number. And, above all, if they don’t like the White House’s preferred policies, let them propose their own."

"The GOP is right: This isn’t a serious proposal. But it’s not evidence that Obama isn’t serious. He’s very serious about not negotiating with himself, and his opening bid proves it."

It seems absolutely freakin' crazy that only one month after a superstorm flattens the infrastructure of the East Coast, the Obama administration and Congress are having Very Serious Talks about cutting $4 trillion in spending. This infrastructure crisis is fueled by the climate change crisis we seem to be ignoring. That's in addition to the zombie banks, the mortgage crisis and the fact that we have far too many unemployed people with no jobs on the horizon and very little help from the people who are supposed to represent them.

NJ Gov. Chris Christie is asking for $36.8 billion for Sandy recovery, and because he did not drop his recovery duties and enthusiastically don a cheerleader costume and wave pom-poms for the Republican candidate, the Republican House will most likely find a way to make him (and Obama) sweat for the money. This is what passes for a democratic republic these days. These people are crazy. But their craziness is encouraged by the "bipartisan" deficit fever from both parties, given extra momentum by the White House and the eternal Quest For The Grand Bargain.

The Obama proposal includes a modest $50 billion infrastructure bank, which isn't even enough to clean up after the storm, let alone address our ongoing problems.

I mean, we have sh*t pouring into the waters off New York and New Jersey. Outright sewage being pumped directly into the waters off New York City, the urban center of the world. What, are we officially a rural Third World nation now? When did the Hudson and Passaic rivers turn into the Ganges?

And while all this is falling apart, President Obama is by most accounts more obsessed with the idea of striking a Grand Bargain as his legacy -- an extraordinarily short-sighted goal that seems more likely to leave a legacy of being the president who let the country fall apart on his watch. It's going to take more than a few hugs for storm victims to fix this, Mr. President. Bad politics and piss-poor policy!

EAST ROCKAWAY, N.Y. — The water flowing out of the Bay Park sewage plant here in Nassau County is a greenish-gray soup of partially treated human waste, a sign of an environmental and public health disaster that officials say will be one of the most enduring and expensive effects of Hurricane Sandy.

In the month since the storm, hundreds of millions of gallons of raw and partly raw sewage from Bay Park and other crippled treatment plants have flowed into waterways in New York and New Jersey, exposing flaws in the region’s wastewater infrastructure that could take several years and billions of dollars to fix. In New York State alone, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has estimated that about $1.1 billion will be needed to repair treatment plants. But officials acknowledge that they will have to do far more.

Motors and electrical equipment must be raised above newly established flood levels, and circuitry must be made waterproof. Dams and levees may have to be built at some treatment plants to keep the rising waters at bay, experts say.

Failure to do so, according to experts, could leave large swaths of the population vulnerable to public health and environmental hazards in future storms.

“You’re looking at significant expenditures of money to make the plants more secure,” said John Cameron, an engineer who specializes in wastewater-treatment facilities and is the chairman of the Long Island Regional Planning Council. “There is no Band-Aid for this,” he added. “This is the new normal.”

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Dr. Brunon Kwiecień

We all remember Anders Breivik, the right-wing extremist who massacred dozens of (mostly) young Norwegians in the summer of 2011, right? Well, now it seems that people in Poland have narrowly escaped having their own version of such a terrorism-induced bloodbath, at the hands of an admirer of Breivik:

Last week the Polish government announced the thwarting of a terrorism plot that is worrisome in its audacity and in who was behind it. In a country with minimal experience of terrorism, the discovery of a sophisticated homegrown bomber seeking to decapitate the government by blowing up the parliament and the president has caused shockwaves and introspection.

The would-be bomber, Dr. Brunon Kwiecień, a forty-five year old research scientist at Krakow’s Agricultural University, fits few currently fashionable profiles. Neither a jihadist nor marginally employed or socially bereft, Kwiecień is married with two children, has a respectable income, and is reported to have been exceptionally interested in explosives since his youth. A skilled chemist popular with his students and considered unremarkable by his university colleagues, he came up with a truly audacious plot to blow up the Sejm, the Polish parliament in Warsaw, during a joint session where both houses, the president and the full cabinet would be present. As Kwiecień is reported to have conducted visits to Warsaw to select his targets, this appears to be more than the figment of a demented imagination.

The seriousness of the bomber’s intent was evidenced by the astonishing haul made by Polish police after Kwiecień’s arrest on November 9. Among the items seized were a dozen illegal firearms, some 1,100 rounds of ammunition, body armor of various types, several detonators (including cell phones triggers) and an amazing four tons of high-grade explosives—more than enough to flatten several city blocks—which the bomber had access to due to his job. There seems to be little doubt that Kwiecień had the technical competence to build the bomb, but his efforts to find collaborators fell short.

As Stratfor explains, this was an attack for which Kwiecień was well suited, requiring a skillset well within his range of competence:

Continue reading »

The MCAT. The Bar. The GRE. All of them pale in comparison to the difficulty in picking the Stupidest Right-Wing Tweet of 2012.

It was hard, but we've arrived at five finalists, and on every Friday through the end of 2012, we'll post one. And on Friday, December 28, you'll have the opportunity to vote for the Stupidest Right-Wing Tweet of the Year.

Our first contender is from Peggy Noonan.

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Of course, as we all know, the Supreme Court -- the majority of whom were appointed by Republicans -- upheld the Affordable Care Act, which must have come as a shock to Peggy Noonan, who's written many books about constitutional law lots of GOP propganda for the Wall Street Journal.

If we could harness stupid to power our electrical grid, the wingnut twitosphere would keep our lights on in perpetuity.

Tune in next Friday for the next finalist.

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CNBC on-air editor Rick Santelli, who is credited with helping to launch the tea party movement, flew into a rage and stomped off camera on Friday because a supporter of President Obama plans to pay shareholders a dividend before taxes are scheduled to go up at the end of the year.

During a discussion on CNBC's Squawk Box, senior economic reporter Steve Liesman observed that the government could "extract more from the wealthy and even from business" as a part a deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff.

Santelli interrupted by pointing to a Wall Street Journal op-ed that criticized former Costco CEO Jim Sinegal because the company he founded intends to pay out dividends before before the Bush-era tax cuts are set to expire at the end of the year.

"He spoke at the Democratic National Convention!" Santelli shouted. "You know, doesn't that bug you a little bit? It's very depressing that people that claim the president's fairness, those wealthy people that he wants to go after? They escape it. They escape it."

Liesman replied by calling attention to a separate Wall Street Journal op-ed that "has a list of GDP by year and completely leaves out the eight years of the Bush administration."

"You know what? Don't give me the switcheroo!" Santelli yelled. "I'm not talking about that one. I'm talking about the one below it, Steve."

"I'm talking about the one above it," Liesman taunted. "I'm rising above it."

"Of course you are because it's so reprehensible!" Santelli exclaimed. "It's reprehensible that people go to Charlotte and say, 'fairness' and then they run to try to beat the tax man!"

"He's doing his job," Liesman noted.

"Shame on them!" Santelli howled as he threw his copy of The Wall Street Journal at the camera. "I can't even talk about it anymore!"

With that, the on-air editor turned and stormed off the air.

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Leave it to Charles Krauthammer, and Fox News, to compare the so-called 'fiscal cliff' negotiations to the terms of surrender that ended the Civil War. Krauthammer ended with the thought that Republicans should just walk away because they were in such a strong position of leverage when the economy heads back into a tailspin as a result. This is the type of mindset that not only the conservative pundits have but also some Republican politicians. The smarter among them though realize the folly of Krauthammer's pontificating and are looking for a deal --any deal-- that won't get them lynched by their own supporters. They know Obama has them in a bind and are looking for a face-saving option.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: It's not just a bad deal, this is really an insulting deal. What Geithner offered, what you showed on the screen, Robert E. Lee was offered easier terms at Appomattox, and he lost the Civil War. The Democrats won by 3% of the vote and they did not hold the House, Republicans won the house. So this is not exactly unconditional surrender, but that is what the administration is asking of the Republicans.

This idea -- there are not only no cuts in this, there's an increase in spending with a new stimulus. I mean, this is almost unheard of. What do they expect? They obviously expect the Republicans will cave on everything. I think the Republicans ought to simply walk away. The president is the president. He's the leader. They are demanding that the Republicans explain all the cuts that they want to make.

We had that movie a year-and-a-half ago where Paul Ryan presented a budget, a serious real budget with real cuts. Obama was supposed to gave speech where he would respond with a counter offer. And what did he do? He gave a speech where he had Ryan sitting in the front row. He called the Ryan proposal un-American, insulted him, offered nothing, and ran on Mediscare in the next 18 months.

And they expect the Republicans are going to do this again? The Republicans are going to walk on this. And I think they have leverage. Yes, for Congressional Democrats it will help them in the future if Republicans absorb the blame because we will have a recession. But Obama is not running again unlike the Congressional Democrats. He's going to have a recession, 9% unemployment, 2 million more unemployed, and a second term that's going to be a ruin. That is not a good proposition if you are Barack Obama.

Since Ezra Klein is the person the White House taps when they want to get out a message, this could be encouraging news. We're all sick of watching Obama give away the store, so this is new. The problem is, Ezra also says Obama is playing rope-a-dope to make the Republicans propose the very cuts he's already willing to give them -- and they may be the cuts that shred our safety net:

Republican aides are circulating their summary of the White House’s opening bid on the fiscal cliff. They’re circulating it because they believe it fleshes out Speaker John Boehner’s complaint that “the White House has to get serious.” Above all, they’re circulating it because the president isn’t offering them anything in his opening bid.

Suzy posted the full summary here. It calls for $1.6 trillion in taxes and only $400 billion in new entitlement spending cuts (though note that it assumes the roughly trillion dollars in discretionary spending cuts passed in the Budget Control Act and the trillion dollars in savings from ending the wars, such that the total spending cuts, at least in the White House’s view, are nearer to $2.4 trillion). It also includes about $200 billion in stimulus, including the extension or replacement of the payroll tax cut, and a proposal to encourage homeowners to refinance. Oh, and it lifts the debt ceiling.

“How did it take them three weeks (and two days) to offer nothing but President Obama’s budget?” A GOP leadership aide asked me rhetorically.

We’re seeing two things here. One is that the negotiations aren’t going well. When one side begins leaking the other side’s proposals, that’s typically a bad sign. The other is that Republicans are frustrated at the new Obama they’re facing: The Obama who refuses to negotiate with himself.

That’s what you’re really seeing in this “proposal.” Previously, Obama’s pattern had been to offer plans that roughly tracked where he thought the compromise should end up. The White House’s belief was that by being solicitous in their policy proposals, they would win goodwill on the other side, and even if they didn’t, the media would side with them, realizing they’d sought compromise and been rebuffed. They don’t believe that anymore.

Perhaps the key lesson the White House took from the last couple of years is this: Don’t negotiate with yourself. If Republicans want to cut Medicare, let them propose the cuts. If they want to raise revenue through tax reform, let them identify the deductions. If they want deeper cuts in discretionary spending, let them settle on a number. And, above all, if they don’t like the White House’s preferred policies, let them propose their own. That way, if the White House eventually does give in and agree to some of their demands, Republicans will feel like they got one over on the president. A compromise isn’t measured by what you offer, it’s measured by what the other side feels they made you concede.

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A reporter at a press conference in D.C. with Grumpy John McCain, who still wants to rant about Benghazi even after it's become clear there's nobody out there on that lawn, asked a perfectly sensible question yesterday:

Q: Do you think there was potentially a greater national-security threat in apparently thousands of pages of classified documents ending up on the personal computer of a Tampa socialite who may have been a friend of the head of the CIA, of secret covert e-mail accounts involving the head of the CIA, and a top general in Afghanistan, and the fact that the FBI agent who was complained to stepped out of the chain of command and apparently went to a House Republican leader, rather than anybody upstairs. Do you think that there's potential -- you put all that together -- do you think that's a greater potential national security threat than what you're talking about?

You could watch the veins begin to bulge on Grumpy's neck and forehead as this question went along, and so naturally he burst like a festering pustule when it was done:

MCCAIN: Well, I say with great respect, that’s one of the dumbest questions I’ve ever heard. -- I’m answering your question. Do you want me to answer your question or do you want to interrupt? Which do you want? -- There are four dead Americans. The lives of other Americans were put in jeopardy.

This is a matter of four dead Americans. I think that the other issue raised is very serious, and I think it deserves a thorough and complete investigation — but it does not rise to the level of an attack on an American consulate that took four American lives.

OK, just so we're clear: Potential security threat created that exposes possible Republican chicanery? Never an issue. Tragic incident in which intelligence details remain unclear, so it can be endlessly exploited? Yeh, that's what gets Grumpy's attention.

There's an unnerving report in The Politico about the fiscal cliff deal being bandied around. It's framed as being the framework of a deal.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told “Morning Joe” on Tuesday that he could see $400 billion in entitlement cuts. That’s the floor, according to Democratic aides, and it could go higher in the final give and take. The vast majority of the savings, and perhaps all of it, will come from Medicare, through a combination of means-testing, raising the retirement age and other “efficiencies” to be named later. It is possible Social Security gets tossed into the mix, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) plans to fight that, if he has to yield on other spending fronts. Democrats want most Medicare and other entitlement savings to kick in between 10 and 20 years from now, which will make some Republicans choke. Democrats will point to the precedent set by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) of pushing most mandatory savings off until a decade from now.

This report makes it appear that raising the retirement age of Medicare is a done deal. Remember, the President was willing to give up the store, the candy and any self respect he had as a Democrat when he had accepted a deal with John Boehner during the debt ceiling crisis which later was rejected.

That night, Jackson and Loper sent over a three-page proposal based on the discussions; in exchange for agreeing to the $800 billion in additional revenue, they asked for more than $450 billion in combined cuts to Medicare andMedicaid over the next decade alone, as well as a series of changes to Social Security, including a new formula for calculating benefits and a higher retirement age.There was no question that the framework negotiated by Obama, Daley and Geithner — and laid out in the Republicans’ offer sheet — unsettled the stomachs of some White House aides. No one liked the idea of acceding to Medicare cuts, and most didn’t think Social Security should be part of the deal at all. (Democratic orthodoxy holds that Social Security has nothing to do with the federal debt, since it generates its own revenue from the payroll tax.) But Obama’s senior aides, including the political adviser David Plouffe, had come to believe that a grand bargain, however imperfect, was preferable to a smaller deal — and far preferable to a debt default.

Now that the President won reelection, he's in a much stronger position then he was after the tea partiers crashed DC. So why is he wiling to listen to ridiculous earned benefits/entitlement cuts? Oh wait, he's not listening to them because Republicans aren't proposing them or anything at all at this point.

Ezra Klein's report confirms this fact.

And the particular Medicare problem isn’t that Democrats are refusing the GOP’s proposed Medicare cuts. It’s that Republicans are refusing to name their Medicare cuts.
Politico quotes a “top Democratic official” who paints the picture simply: “Rob Nabors [the White House negotiator], has been saying: ‘This is what we want on revenues on the down payment. What’s your guys’ ask on the entitlement side?’ And they keep looking back at us and saying: ‘We want you to come up with that and pitch us.’ That’s not going to happen.”

Boehner and Co. want Obama to do his job for them. He figures that he can blame Medicare cuts on Democrats after that even though the GOP would vote to pass them. It's the same tactic that Romney/Ryan used during the campaign. They would never be specific about any tax cuts, tax code loop holes or anything else for that matter.

That’s left Republicans in a peculiar negotiating position: They know they want “Medicare reform” — indeed, they frequently identify Medicare reform as the key to their support for a deal — but aside from premium support, they don’t quite know what they mean by it, and they’re afraid to find out. The solution they’ve come up with, such as it is, is to insist that the Obama administration needs to be the one to propose Medicare cuts.

Ezra finishes with this.

Republican policy types need to start thinking about what they want to do to Medicare, and quick.

Well, I'm glad the White House is refusing to play that game so far, but if what's been reported so far during this fiscal cliff nonsense then exactly why does Boehner have to be specific? He knows the President wants a deal before Christmas so he's feels he can sit back and wait because even Boehner knows that the cliff is really a slope and nothing bad will happen on January 1. The American people do not want to see the ages to the social safety nets raised at all.

This is a time when President Obama can shift the attitudes of more millions of people if he pushes back against severe and cruel cuts to the safety nets and demanding raising tax rates since he won reelection with a message of higher tax rates. It's a twofer. First, it's the right thing to do economically and morally for the economy and Americans. Two, it would further move the anti-tax GOP position that has dominated DC further to the left than its been for a long time. This could then be built upon with the next wave of Democrats coming to Washington when the results from these moves prove positive for the President. I'm not holding my breath on it, but we can push for it..

And looky here. The White House did open the bidding in the fiscal cliff and Republicans aren't pleased.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner presented the House speaker, John A. Boehner, a detailed proposal on Thursday to avert the year-end fiscal crisis with $1.6 trillion in tax increases over 10 years, $50 billion in immediate stimulus spending, home mortgage refinancing and a permanent end to Congressional control over statutory borrowing limits. The proposal, loaded with Democratic priorities and short on detailed spending cuts, met strong Republican resistance. In exchange for locking in the $1.6 trillion in added revenues, President Obama embraced the goal of finding $400 billion in savings from Medicare and other social programs to be worked out next year, with no guarantees.

He did propose some upfront cuts in programs like farm price supports, but did not specify an amount or any details. And senior Republican aides familiar with the offer said those initial spending cuts might be outweighed by spending increases, including at least $50 billion in infrastructure spending, mortgage relief, an extension of unemployment insurance and a deferral of automatic cuts to physician reimbursements under Medicare.

I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised that they came out this strong. Maybe they listened to some Democrats on the hill who said this:

Liberals have drawn a hard line against entitlement cuts and $400 billion is a lot of money, so some progressives are not pleased with the idea.

Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison, the chairman of the 77-member Progressive Caucus, told Salon that his members would not support entitlement cuts. “Any agreement to meet our end-of-the-year deadlines will need a large portion of the House Democratic Caucus to pass. Progressives will not support any deal that cuts benefits for families and seniors who rely on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to put food on the table or cover their health costs,” he said.

Outside groups took an even tougher line.

Liberal groups are coming out strong as are many liberal bloggers, but we have to keep the pressure on.

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BillO goes from one nutty conspiracy to another. First, he's been treating Benghazi like a complex Len Deighton novel -- which it ain't -- and second, he needed a juicy target for his annual ritual, the "War on Christmas" and its associated nonsense. So he went out and found Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, a moderate Republican, to be his patsy.

BillO has been running stories about the Rhode Island holiday tree story, in case you've had the good fortune to miss it.

A beaming Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee calmly weathered a cross-country Christmas controversy yesterday, standing by his PC pronouncement that the 17-foot spruce in the State House rotunda is a “holiday tree” as outraged residents cried foul. Taking the Christmas out of the tree is in the Rhode Island spirit, Chafee said, invoking the 1663 Colonial charter and the legacy of state father Roger Williams. “I’m just continuing what other governors have done,” Chafee told the Herald after dedicating a separate tree to soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I just want to make sure I’m doing everything possible in this building to honor Roger Williams.”

O'Reilly has been pining to get the governor on and he finally agreed to join him on The Factor. The first part of the video is Bill's talking points segment, which features Bill rambling on about secular progressives and atheists and so on. Then on comes Chafee, giving BillO the launching pad to ratchet up his patented "War on Christmas" hysterics on the governor.

Chafee made the case that it's a publicly funded building where the tree is located and he feels that these times-are-a-changin'. That's not music to Bill's ears -- after all, we know he sees his white dominant America slipping away -- and he kept pounding away. Chafee used as an analogy about how forcing students to say Christian prayers in public schools was the same thing, since not all the students were Christians -- but Bill wasn't buying it.

Chafee: Of course you can't ask non-Christians to say a Christian prayer in public school so these controversies, you generate them here, but they really shouldn't be controversies. It's a public building paid for by everybody...

O'Reilly: I think you're conflating two different issues.

Chafee: No, not at all.

O'Reilly explained that the Lord's Prayer was a religious act, but claimed that a Christmas tree is a secular symbol. Huh?

Governor, the Lord's Prayer is obviously a religious expression, a Christmas tree is secular.

OK, let's ask my Jewish friends about Christmas trees.

Near the end of the interview the Governor was getting tired of the attacks and pompousness and he loudly proclaimed for this holiday season that O'Reilly and Fox News are just plain angry all the time.

O'Reilly: You're making people unhappy. Everybody's unhappy with you.

Chafee: Merry Christmas

Governor, you know I'm right in your heart you know I'm right.

Chafee: No, your show -- Fox News, you guys are too angry. This is an angry network.

O'Reilly: I'm not angry, Governor. Look, I'm a happy guy.

Chafee: Listen to yourself, you're yelling.

O'Reilly: I want our traditions to be respected, that's all.

Chafee: Well, Merry Christmas.

Snap! BillO got played. Listen to yourself, O'Reilly. Way to go, Gov. Chafee. You didn't buy into his idiotic argument and you made him appear small, petty and angry all at the same time. Bravo.