Crossposted from The People's View
Keith Olbermann, sorry, but as much as I used to like you, I am sick and tired of you harping on this President to gain a rating bonanza from 10% of your liberal left population more so than walking on that so called bogus "Principle" - a principle worth questioning.
Let me just make it very simple for you and your echoing chamber. Please take a note which sector of the liberal voice you represent. According to the release of a new Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted last week; when asked about the way the President is Handling his job:
| Disapprove in % | Approve in % |
---|
All | 47 | 49 |
Liberal Dems | 10 | 87 |
Democrats | 17 | 79 |
Independents | 46 | 50 |
Republicans | 82 | 15 |
Conservative Repubs | 85 | 13 |
Mr. Olbermann, in case you are wondering about the support the tax-and-benefits deal reached by President Obama and Republican leaders of Congress, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, it finds:
Sixty-nine percent support the package overall, far outnumbering the 29 percent opposed. And even when given arguments that it'll add as much as $900 billion to the federal budget deficit, 62 percent continue to support the measure, with opposition inching up to only 34 percent.
The latest national survey conducted on Dec. 9-12 by the Pew Research Center finds:
The agreement between President Obama and congressional Republicans to extend tax cuts and unemployment benefits is getting strong bipartisan support. Overall, 60% approve of the agreement while just 22% disapprove.
There are virtually no partisan differences in opinions about the agreement – 63% of Democrats approve of it, as do 62% of Republicans and 60% of independents. Among Democrats, liberals are as supportive of the agreement as are conservative and moderate Democrats.
Sir, just because you are screaming in front of a camera and saying I don't like how this President is doing his job does not mean the majority of the real "base" feels the way you do. In fact, the majority of the base has tuned off your freak show. At least I have. Your audacity to suggest during the Health Care debate that Obama should face a primary challenge should the Public Option is dropped meme was an eye opener. However, I had taken the good you offer with the bad balancing it out for the sake of supporting the only liberal leaning cable news but your paranoid behavior to calling the current tax plan a "betrayal" to the American People while 2 million people are held hostage if the current tax plan is not passed is truly over the top utter stupidity.
Did you not know sir how the tax bill will help 2 million people get unemployment Benefit or help 95% of Americans on an average keep $3,000 in tax savings annually or gives students and families up to $2,500 in tax savings to help pay for college tuition and other expenses or allow a 2% employee-side payroll tax cut for over 155 million workers saving a family making $70,000 a year about $1,400 or provide a 65 percent tax credit to help cover the cost of COBRA for those who lost their jobs in the recession or don't you know like ex-Republican Liberals that just because of the unemployment benefits, this plan will help stimulate the economy and this deal will create approximately 1.6 million jobs or do you contest that the deal will increase the GDP just in 2011 by 3/4 of a percent?
When you were foaming at the mouth in your special comment section (I am not going to even try to link that ugly teabagging type of performance), this was exactly what you said:
"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. [emphesis added]
Have you really read the details and looked at the alternatives? Do you really think because you are louder and hold a convoluted "principle", you are right? If you think that way, you are a notorious bullshitter who has got his head buried up his ass so I am going to try to give you a pointer as to what a wide range of independent analysts and economist have said:
Mr. Zandi, Chief economist at Moody's Analytics estimated that the deal could cause an acceleration of growth to 4 percent next year and help create 1.6 million jobs, drawing the unemployment rate down from 9.8 percent to 8.5 percent by the end of the year.
The Economist: On Monday Barack Obama and Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress struck a deal on a massive new package of stimulus and tax cut extensions, worth some $800 billion (around 5% of GDP). Though it must still pass the parties’ respective caucuses, this is good news for the economy: the prospect of inadvertent fiscal tightening was the biggest cloud hanging over the 2011 outlook... Economists had generally projected growth next year at only 2.5%, and the biggest risk to that already tepid outlook had been the prospect that some or all of Mr Bush’s tax cuts would expire at the same time as much of Mr Obama’s temporary stimulus. Tonight’s deal is likely to lead to a round of upward revisions.
From a psychological standpoint, this probably will
continue to boost the markets in the sense that this most
likely will lead to an expansion in economic activity," said
Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Avalon Partners in New York.
Lawrence Mishel, The Economic Policy Institute: President Obama won policies that will put or keep money in the pockets of the unemployed and middle and low-income families, which will increase spending and create jobs.
Bricklin Dwyer, Economist for BNP Paribas:"The package should provide a noticeable boost to GDP in 2011."
Greg Mankiw, Professor of Economics at Harvard University: "I am generally pleased with the compromise over taxes the President and Republicans struck yesterday... As the policy was described yesterday, this payroll tax cut goes entirely to the worker. This increases work incentives, but the main motivation is probably to increase take-home pay, consumer spending, and aggregate demand. ... I should note that, as part of the deal, the President also got his proposal to allow businesses to expense investment spending. As I have said previously, this is a good idea, but the impact is likely to be modest."
Macroeconomic Advisers: A December to Remember Compromise Boosts Growth: There are three major components that we had not assumed, and that would, in fact, together significantly impact the economic outlook over the next few years...Based upon what is currently known of these three key proposals, our preliminary analysis suggests that GDP growth in 2011 would be boosted by roughly 1/2 to 3/4 percentage point. This is on top of the 3.7% growth of GDP anticipated for 2011 in our recently published forecast.
Michael Linden and Michael Ettlinger, Center for American Progress: The Jobs Impact of the Recently Announced Tax Framework: The deal as announced would save or create 2.2 million jobs [through 2012], excluding jobs saved by extending the broad based Bush tax cuts, on which everyone agreed.
Ezra Klein, Washington Post: So is this a good deal? It's a lot better than I would've told you the White House was going to get if you'd asked me a week ago. There's some new stimulus in the form of the payroll-tax cut and the expensing proposals. The older stimulus programs that are getting extended -- notably the unemployment insurance and the tax credits -- probably would've expired outside of this deal... And finally, it's something of a hopeful sign: The White House sat in a room with Republicans and Democrats and managed to negotiate an actual compromise. The final deal includes some things that Democrats will like and some things they won't like, and it includes some things Republicans will like and some things they won't like. But it's a deal, and a better one than many -- myself included -- thought they'd reach. These tax cuts were a bit of a special legislative case, as their scheduled expiration forced action, but if you want to be optimistic, this process suggests that the next two years might be a bit more productive than some of us have been predicting.
Here, here, here, here, and here are other opinions and facts you might want to consider before painting the President as someone who is unprincipled, a betrayer, self-defeating, weak, and not tough enough to stand for liberal causes.
I think Deaniac83 in the article at the People's View, "Why Is Obama Tougher on Democrats than Republicans?" nailed it head on when explaining the misunderstood toughness of this President:
I think the fundamental displeasure comes from not understanding true toughness. Being tough isn't about delivering verbal beatdowns and pounding the podium. It's about the courage to get things done, make transformational if imperfect changes and moving this country forward.
So, Mr. Olbermann, hope you understand that the outrage you display is counter productive mainly because you are not talking to President George W. Bush. Take a chill pill from the verbal beat-down and try to understand things in a broad vision rather than a narrow tunnel vision.