Politics Plus

I tried to get to the live feed of the BernieBuster, but it had crashed.  In the meantime, Senators are larding up the Compromise Equals Capitulation Act with thick slabs of Christmas pork, pushing up the cost of the bill to $858 billion.  Republicans are licking their chops and talking about how massive spending cuts will be needed to pay for all this.  Even more absurd, it appears that this bill will actually be a tax increase for millions of workers, hitting the poorest hardest of all.  Here’s an extensive analysis of the doings, but first, our new poll is on whether or not Obama should face a challenge in the 2012 primary.  Check it out.

…On Friday, there were contrasting events for public consumption.

On Capitol Hill, Sanders spoke vigorously for 8 1/2 hours in a virtually empty chamber, urging defeat of a measure he said would give "tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires who don’t need it." He finally ended his speech, conceding "It has been a long day."

At the White House, Obama turned over the briefing room microphone to former President Clinton who declared, "I don’t believe there is a better deal out there." All sides, he said, "are going to have to eat some things they don’t like."

The add-ons were being attached behind the scenes.

Almost $5 billion in subsidies for corn-based ethanol and a continuing tariff to protect against ethanol imports were wrapped up and placed on the tree Thursday night for farm-state lawmakers and agribusiness lobbyists. Environmentalists won more grants for developers of renewable energy, like wind and solar.

For urban lawmakers, there’s a continuation of about-to-expire tax breaks that could save commuters who use mass transit about $1,000 a year. Other popular tax provisions aimed at increasing production of hybrid automobiles, biodiesel fuel, coal and energy-efficient household appliances would be extended through the end of 2011 under the new add-ons.

The package also includes an extension of two Gulf Coast tax incentive programs enacted after Hurricane Katrina to spur economic development in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.

The ethanol money was added despite a growing congressional opposition to subsidizing the fuel after decades of government support. Last month, 17 Republican and Democratic senators wrote to leaders calling the tax breaks "fiscally indefensible," since there’s already a law in place that requires ethanol be blended into gasoline.

"Historically the government has helped a product compete in one of three ways: Subsidize it, protect it from competition or require its use. We understand that ethanol may be the only product receiving all three forms of support from the U.S. government at this time," the senators wrote.

But ethanol still has powerful supporters on Capitol Hill, including Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee and a key negotiator on the Senate tax bill. Adding the ethanol tax breaks was designed to help shore up the votes of many rural Democratic as well as Republican senators.

But while the add-ons may have won more votes for the Obama-GOP deal the Senate, their potential impact is less clear in the House, where Democrats have criticized the package as a tax giveaway to the rich… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <AP/Google>

I find the ethanol pork particularly offensive, because using farmland for fuel drives food costs up at a time when millions of Americans don’t have enough to eat.  Furthermore, planting, fertilizing, growing, harvesting, transporting and refining the crop uses so much oil that the ethanol does little to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.  The only green here is on the greenbacks!  Watching Senators lard this bill, I want to throw up.

I have to admire Bernie.  I could not have kept going the way he did.

The tax deal reached between President Obama and congressional Republicans could mean a higher tax bill for roughly one in three workers as a result of the Social Security tax cut Republicans pushed as a replacement for the current Making Work Pay tax credit.

The Making Work Pay credit gives workers up to $400, paid out at 8 percent of income, meaning that anybody making at least $5,000 gets the full amount — and gets as much as anybody else. Its replacement knocks two percentage points off the payroll tax cut, meaning a worker would need to make $20,000 to get a $400 break. Of the nation’s roughly 150 million workers, around 50 million make less than $20,000 and will see at least some increase as a result.

Additionally, roughly a quarter of 20 million state and local workers pay no payroll tax, because they have a separate pension system. Some of those workers with children will benefit from the extension of other tax credits, but overall will have less money in their pocket… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Huffington Post>

There it is.  If you’re poor, you get a tax increase to pay for tax cuts in the $hundreds of thousands for millionaires and billionaires!

Keith Olbermann with Rep. Jay Inslee and Rachel Maddow with Rep. Jan Schakowsky both had excellent takes on today’s doings.  First Keith.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Then Rachel.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

When I went to see Obama speak in October, overcoming my disabilities to do so, I paid a high price in pain.  But I thought it was worth it to see him rail against tax cuts for the rich, and promising not to give Republicans the keys to the car they have proven they can’t drive.  He isn’t just giving them the keys.  He’s trying to give them them the whole damn car!  Has this earned him a primary challenge in 2012?  Vote ib our new poll (top right) to answer.

Nobody in their right mind believes that Fox is really fair and balanced.  But they’re so much worse than that.  Several years ago I started referring to Fox as the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda.  Leaked email has now proved it.

This will come as a shock to you, I know, but there’s now pretty much incontrovertible evidence that FOX News is little more than a propaganda unit of the GOP, a leaked e-mail in which Fox News’s Washington managing editor Bill Sammon issued a memo directing his news staff not to use the phrase "public option."

Instead, Sammon wrote, Fox’s reporters should use "government option" and similar phrases — wording that a top Republican pollster had recommended in order to turn public opinion against the Democrats’ reform efforts….

Sources familiar with the situation in Fox’s Washington bureau have told Media Matters that Sammon uses his position as managing editor to "slant" Fox’s supposedly neutral news coverage to the right. Sammon’s "government option" email is the clearest evidence yet that Sammon is aggressively pushing Fox’s reporting to the right — in this case by issuing written orders to his staff.

As far back as March 2009, Fox personalities had sporadically referred to the "government option."

Two months prior to Sammon’s 2009 memo, Republican pollster Frank Luntz appeared on Sean Hannity’s August 18 Fox News program. Luntz scolded Hannity for referring to the "public option" and encouraged Hannity to use "government option" instead.

Luntz argued that "if you call it a ‘public option,’ the American people are split," but that "if you call it the ‘government option,’ the public is overwhelmingly against it." Luntz explained that the program would be "sponsored by the government" and falsely claimed that it would also be "paid for by the government."

Form the leaked e-mail, with the subject line "friendlly reminder: let’s not slip back into calling it the ‘public option’":

• Please use the term "government-run health insurance" or, when brevity is a concern, "government option," whenever possible.
• When it is necessary to use the term "public option" (which is, after all, firmly ensconced in the nation’s lexicon), use the qualifier "so-called," as in "the so-called public option."
• Here’s another way to phrase it: "The public option, which is the government-run plan."
• When newsmakers and sources use the term "public option" in our stories, there’s not a lot we can do about it, since quotes are of course sacrosanct.

Yep. Fair and balanced…

Inserted from <Daily Kos>

Now I has you, why should Fox reporters have press credentials?  Other that the Republican Party itself, no organization has done more to harm our nation.