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These budget negotiations were a giant win for the Republican Party. President Obama initially cut $40 billion from his own budget proposal — and he got absolutely no credit for that. It was a very typical preemptive concession by the president. It was so typical, you wonder if he recognizes what an indisputably terrible strategy it is or if he has a different agenda.
So, after getting no credit for his original $40 billion concession, then the negotiations began at square one. The Republicans claimed in February that they wanted $32 billion in cuts from that point on. About a week ago, the president came out an announced that they had given the Republicans another $33 billion in cuts — a billion more than they originally asked for. And still the Republicans wanted more.
Why not? They’re dealing with the world’s worst negotiator, why not ask for more? After February they came up with a brilliant good cop-bad cop strategy with the Tea Party, where they had the Tea Party force them to go to $61 billion in demands. Which pushed the spectrum out further to the right. They know President Obama will go to the middle of any spectrum, no matter how radical. And then once they had baited Obama out to the $33 billion number, which was past their original goal, they baited him out even further. Finally, they got him to $38.5 billion in cuts an hour before the deadline.
So, in the end, he got no credit for the original giant cuts, he got no credit for going a billion past the Republican’s wildest dreams and he had to give them an extra $5.5 billion to get a deal. But what he doesn’t realize is that the shutdown would have been a disaster for the Republicans — they never wanted that. They were playing him the whole time. When Boehner came back with the deal, he got a rousing ovation from his side, including the Tea Party faction.
It was a put on. The whole time when the Tea Party was demanding the whole $61 billion, they were just playing their part in the game. They were the bad cop to make sure Obama made the deal with Boehner, the good cop. They must had a good laugh at the end.
First, I want to make clear I am not a Monday morning quarterback. Anyone who watches me on The Young Turks or on MSNBC knows that I have been saying all along that Obama was going to fall for this trick and that he was going to go way past $33 billion. It’s just who he is. He hates conflict. There almost isn’t any deal you can’t get him to sign off on. And that’s my whole point for writing this — we can not have him do this next time!
Next time, the negotiations are over trillions, not billions. If he meets them more than halfway — as he has done every single time now — it will be a colossal disaster. Whenever Republican presidents try to cut Social Security or Medicare, they run into a brick wall. If the Republicans use President Obama to help them do that instead, then he will have done more damage than a Republican president can.
I hear from Democrats every single time that they’ll fight the next time. And it’s never the next time. Well, this time we’ve hit the wall. The next negotiations will be inarguably the most important. If the president obamas this (yes, I used it as a verb), it will be catastrophic.
Now, I want to ask even the most ardent Obama supporters — do you really believe the president is going to hold strong the next time around? Even you don’t believe that, right? It’s not who he is. He will look to get past partisan politics. What’s the only way to do that when one side is being obstinate? To give in to them. How many times have we seen this movie?
I didn’t write this to rub it in the face of the feckless Democrats who always wind up playing the role of the Washington Generals to the Republican Globetrotters (remember the Democrats have the White House and the Senate — but they let the GOP run the place like they are totally in charge). I wrote it to tell you how incredibly important it is that you put real pressure on the president from the left. He will move to the middle of any spectrum!
If you don’t help push the spectrum to the left, the Republicans will move it massively to the right — and the president will fall for it.
The whole point of the insane, draconian, ridiculous Paul Ryan budget proposal for next year was to move the spectrum all the way to the radical right, so that they can lure Democrats to a false middle, that is in reality the far right.
It’s time to stop playing nice with Democrats. Good cop-good cop doesn’t work. We need a bad cop. We need a strong progressive wing to keep shouting “no deal!” every time the White House wants to concede (which will be every time).
You can ignore this, blame me and go hug the president one more time, but you won’t be doing your side any favors. If you actually care about policy and progressive priorities, you must get tough with the president right now. There is no next time.
51 Comments
I agree mostly but I wonder if the Big O is really trying to “look to get past partisan politics?” Privatizing Medicare and Social Security will probably guarantee him all the corporate funding he needs to meet his goals for the next election if he doesn’t have it sewn up already. Does he ever use his bully pulpit to tell the country that Social Security isn’t insolvent and there are myriad better ways to fix Medicare and cut the deficit without privatizing this beloved Federal program?
Following the corporate agenda is generally his playbook. Just this week he’s tying up another horrid free trade deal in Colombia. What do these free trade deals accomplish? Greater corporate profits, outsourcing of middle class jobs which will never come back, importation of cheap, shoddy, cut rate merchandise for the consumer.
Obama, like most of officialdom in Washington is barely cognizant of anything besides the professional class they inhabit. The plight of working class and poor people means squat to them. I think you can count on the Prez to take pro-corporate actions previously deemed unthinkable by a Democrat unless maybe Madison-size protests start happening outside his window.
Obama is an avowed enemy of the American working class and of decent human beings everywhere. Being elected president is just one way Obama is fluffing up his resume prior to achieving his real goals: a seat on JP Morgan’s Board of Directors and an Ivy League law professor gig where he can help incubate, hatch, and nurture another crop of corporate America’s ideological servants by teaching them that the law has nothing to do with justice.
Hey, Cenk, get real: Obama didn’t fall for anything. It’s all worked out just the way he planned it.
And there are no progressives that anyone in the Dem party listens to, much less any progressive Dems in elected office. It’s all a charade, a chimera, kabuki.
You wanna challenge Obama? Go ahead; I’m down with anyone who will primary his Republican ass.
I have been a lifelong Dem and I can tell you that I will not be voting for O in 12. Cenk he is not coming our way, forget it, we are done. I have accepted the fact that I will most likely be living under another Rep President again for awhile. I work at the Airport and talk to people from all over this country everyday and I am telling you that he will not be elected again. Everyone is so pissed.
The thought of voting for Obama again makes me sick to my stomach. I want to tell him he’s fired for doing such a rotten job, pretty much start to finish.
I want to vote for someone who would stand up to the radical right, even if it means throwing away my vote. In my mind, I can go there easily. Except for one thing: appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court.
If Justice Ginsberg retires in the next few years, her successor MUST be appointed by a President who is not a Republican. And what if one of the right-wing justices does us the favor of dying or retiring before 2017? Or what if the Court’s swing vote, Justice Kennedy, decides to hang up his robe?
Obama may not have appointed the most liberal justices when he tapped Kagan and Sotomayor, but they are a long way from the troglodytes that will be appointed if a member of the GOP is President when the next one leaves.
I am ready to jump ship on Obama, but I feel boxed in by this practical and very compelling concern. And I rarely hear it mentioned by anyone.
Ideas?
Cenk. Thanks, man, but you’re way too late. You think you, or anyone, can stop Obamaa?
Good. Luck. With. THAT.
The Democratic and Republican Party no longer serve the interests of the American people. To begin to take the country back, some politician needs to run on these (beyond left vs. right) ideas and WIN.
1. End Political Corruption – enact the Fair Elections Now Act. Strictly voluntary. Matching funds. $100.00 maximum donation. Ban politicians from becoming lobbyists
2. End The Wars – (another form of corporate welfare). Immediately pull out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen
3. Put Millions Back To Work – Federal government invest $2 trillion over 10 years through a national infrastructure bank (run by engineers, not politicians) to create jobs now and increase productivity later. Fund with a millionaire’s tax
4. Balance The Budget – over time by cutting the defense budget, end agricultural subsidies, stop corporate welfare, raise taxes on the super-rich, contain the explosion of health-care costs by adding the public option, allow Medicare to purchase drugs, give MEDPAC wider authority and allow drug re-importation
5. End National Addiction To Oil – begin with a carbon tax to reduce consumption, increase energy efficiency and make alternative energy more cost-competitive. Revenues generated should go to reducing payroll taxes to stimulate employment
6. Keep Social Security Solvent For Generations – raise the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security tax to $180,000. Congress could gradually slow the growth of benefits for middle and high earners while still allowing these benefits to rise in terms of absolute dollars and purchasing power. Lower-wage earners would receive everything they are now promised. Eliminate $4.8 trillion long-term deficit
7. End Bank Monopoly – break up the big banks, strengthen the Volker Rule, end the foreclosure crisis by giving bankruptcy judges the power to order reductions in mortgage principal owed
8. Encourage Upward Mobility In Society – make higher education free to families that can’t afford it. Fund with a financial transactions and bank tax
Why don’t you simply say as a Progressive that you oppose Obama’s Democratic Party Presidential re-nomination? Until some high profile media talking head oppose Obama or a high profile politician announce there candidacy, you are just blowing smoke. You have a gigantic megaphone every day, use it and stop wasting our time.
I have always bought into voting for the Democrat because I’m more afraid of who the Republican might appoint to the Supreme Court. I’m losing my fear. Kagan and Sotomayor haven’t impressed me. They are not writing Justice Douglas-like dissents. They couldn’t even write the Stevens dissent from Bush v. Gore, and I remember when Stevens was seen as kinda conservative too. They are not solid progressive choices, they are just a lot better than whoever McCain would have picked.
I don’t really want to wake up in an America where Alex Kozinski sits on the Supreme Court, but I don’t think it is as likely as it would seem, either. A lot of Democrats would oppose him right off the bat. And they are a lot better at opposing things when they’re out of power than they are at proposing things when they’re in charge.
We’re already stuck with Scalia, Thomas and Alito anyway. The ruling class – which is also full of Democrats – wants us back in the pre-Lochner era. Those three are going to take us there anyway. Who sits next to them in the pretty class photo doesn’t really matter that much anymore.
“Congress could gradually slow the growth of benefits for middle and high earners while still allowing these benefits to rise in terms of absolute dollars and purchasing power.”
I keep seeing this slipped into the same bullet points on Social Security. Can someone please, please, PLEASE explain to me what is progressive about this? “Middle earners” are not going to be defined as people earning $150K, they are going to be defined as people earning $50K. Why should the grow of their benefits be slowed???? What is the justification for affecting the benefits of the people earning $150K? Are there really so many of them out there that this is going to affect Social Security all that much? The point of social security is that we are all in this together. Monkey with benefits based on income and voila, we are means testing it, which has been the dream of the right wing since that FDR created the program.
This is a classic shill. Social Security is not in trouble and can be massively strengthened by eliminating the illogical income cap on contributions. There is no need to start classifying recipients so that those “middler and high earners” get less.
If I’m missing something, tell me. Otherwise stop pushing this one.
Cent I love your passion but the sad fact is Obama is corrupt and does not care about anyone but the rich! Wall st and Corporate America owns BOTH parties so they are in a win/win space. Cent here is an example: You have Ed Rendell on your show a lot as the foil against the GOP’s plans to gut social spending cuts. Ed Rendell has said he supports going after public pensions as laid out by Govs Christie and Corbett! He also said he would cut deeper then Bowles/Simpson. What is the differece between the two parties? Cent the media ia not much better…why is Paul Ryan being hailed as a hero by the media? If Ryan supported ending giveways to the insurance and Phara industries that something to talk about…why does CNN/MSNBC bring on David Walker to demand cuts in SS as though Walker is a god king? Yes the GOP have the Koch Bros but the Dems have the Peterson gang..hell they might even taking money from the Koch bros!
We progressives can and will shout and attempt to push Obama to the left, but he has to be willing to move, and I don’t think this “New Democrat” Obama is willing to move left. He is that conflict-averse.
We got a fine rhetorical amoeba for a President. He only has to appear to “fight” to reach the “New Democrat” goals. He believes he’s doing a good job.
How horrifyng. As a country we continue to move backward, but Obama calls it forward.
Very true. Of course, if you want to be Leader of the Free World, conflict is an occupational hazard.
But Obama has no problem attacking lefties or Bradley Manning or any number of American citizens. He also has conflicts because of military occupations with numerous atrocities such as killing babies.
Obama, being the poodle of Peter Peterson, is attacking not just the “left”, but the American people. This Disaster Capitalism is just more Dirty Coal and Dirty Oil and Oil Wars and War against American Dissenters.
Obama has enabled the Teabaggers as this Post accurately describes. Never negotiate with Fascists, but Obama does.
Right on the money, mojada. Obama hasn’t been fooled by anyone, he is a traitor to the American people, he lied to get elected in the most outrageous bait and switch we’ve yet seen in American politics. You are exactly right about his goals. Cenk, you are still extremely deluded about his true motives and character. It’s getting late in the day to oppose him. You want to criticize the Tea Party but where are the demonstrating anti-Obama forces from the left? Nowhere to be found, still waiting like the gormless idiots they are for the ‘real’ Obama to emerge. He has emerged! He has received little or no visible, strong opposition from anywhere on the left and that is a huge mistake. This is how Mussolini and Hitler came to power, the left loved them initially and kept making excuses for them. The right will take over from lack of opposition from the left.
Oh yes – revolutionary1, I wish you were running for President! You have my vote.
My feeling about Obama lately is that he’s a moderate Republican – but to check, I looked back at the 2008 Democratic Platform. And you know what? That is a pretty weak statement for a progressive. “Expand the Armed Force”, “Win in Afghanistan”, “Affordable, Quality Health Care Coverage for All Americans”, “Fiscal Responsibility”… this is just a selection, but the bullet list certainly doesn’t sound progressive. Might as well say “Morning in America”.
For a contrast, check out the U.S. Green Party 10 Key Values.
http://www.gp.org/tenkey.shtml
I’m not shilling for the Green Party, I’m just wishing we had a non-Republican choice in 2012.
Yes, Cenk, why don’t you come out forcefully against Obama? You are part of the problem. I stopped watching you when you continued to apologize for Obama as if the Democrats are any different than the Republicans when it comes to the fascist plan for America. We need a Third Party with a strong candidate and people like you could help us, but you are not. Afraid to loose your job with the Obama Ass Kissing Network? You and every other commentator on MSNBC disgust me. You whine, but really you are with the Obama program 100%, that is your network’s policy, forget truth, objectivity and intelligent analysis of anything. You just pound the party line in a slightly different way. You disappoint me greatly. You are the flip side of FOX news. A pox on both of you.
Yes, because he is a fascist. It is possible to be a liberal and a fascist. Mussolini and Hitler started out as socialists. But when they got power, they forgot all that. What we need to do in 2012 is vote for some viable candidate, no doubt for another party with a viable candidate, even if we know they can’t win. Continuing to vote Democrat or Republican is a vote for fascism. The Green Party is gaining power in Germany. Why can’t that happen here? Personally I’m thinking Peace and Freedom or Green. Very few people are still registered Democrats or Republicans so if we all stop voting for them, they will disappear. They need to disappear.
A president with real balls, like FDR (who had a Court with a 6-3 majority of reactionaries to liberals) isn’t afraid of the Supremes. Quite frankly, Scalia and Thomas both need to be impeached, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Alito and Roberts didn’t have some kind of dirt under their fingernails if you look hard enough. All it takes is a willingness (FDR threatened to pack the court with more appointments, and the conservatives caved on the New Deal) to play hardball.
I think Obama is a closet teabagger! :)
I think we should all start calling Obama a Bluedog and stop any pretense that he has any Progressive Blood in him. He’s a shrewd politician in the fact that he’s sold out his base and still has everyone hoping he might change.
This sums it up for me.
http://www.cagle.com/news/Obama2012/main.asp
Cenk is right and I don’t care when his conversion moment came. Standing here, sucking our thumbs and mumbling about O being maybe not as bad as Bachman, does not make it. We progressives will be as reponsible as any other group if this deceitful, right wing president rolls easily into another term. He needs to be opposed, forcefully and effectively.
Cenk
Nobody here believes obama is going to stand up for anything he campaigned on. in fact, most think that Obama is not “giving in” he is a willing participant, he won on promises that he had no intention on standing by.
Question for you is are you going to risk your job and call it as it is? Not Obama when will you stand strong, but Obama is a trojan horse and the system is controlled and bought by special interests and we do not have a democracy but a plutocracy and both parties are in on it. When you do that and start speaking the real truth about what is going on, i will pay attention to what you say. Pointing out over and over how is letting us down and giving in ” as if he does not mean to” is just whitewashing the truth. he is just part of the plan
I ran as the Green party candidate for US Congress MI-12 in 2010, and I am going to run again in 2012 (redistricting hasn’t been announced yet) Check out my website (I know it needs work, and I could use some help there, and, oh, everywhere). Bottom line, I’m working class, reasonably bright, a fighter, and I HAVE PRINCIPLES. I guarantee my constituents “must-see C-span TV”!
Fall for it? The President is massively to the right, because his policy prerogatives put him there.
He’s not “giving in.” He’s getting political cover. Clinton did the exact same thing. They’re Reagan Democrats.
He is and has always been Republican. But what he isn’t, is stupid. He wanted to get elected. In Chicago.
Name a serving senator that is black and Republican.
That sounds racist but I don’t mean it that way. I mean that if you want to get elected in America and you happen to be black, you damn well better run as a Democrat.
What I disagree with here is that when we settle for being a ‘wing’, we lose. We are the majority. Most Americans lean left in their thinking, even if many don’t self-identify that way.
Um, he’s not the “world’s worst negotiator.” He WANTS this outcome. The Republicans are just giving him political cover for HIS OWN AGENDA. Duh. Progressives need to tell Obama to fuck the fuck off forever.
“We need a strong progressive wing to keep shouting “no deal!” every time the White House wants to concede (which will be every time).”
Wrong. We need a strong progressive wing that puts forward its own master budgetary proposals like Paul Ryan has. Progressives need to start making specific demands, with numbers and vision, instead of merely being defensive and reactive. Demands about raising, strengthening and expanding Social Security and Medicare, demands about closing military bases, ending wars, eliminating useless and expensive and dangerous standing armies and the weapons industry that goes with them, eliminating all foreign aid for weapons and weapons training (building police states), eliminating all spying agencies and dismantling the hugely expensive and out-of-control national security apparatus, restricting the overly large and counter-productive financial sector, enlarging the health care sector and the number of doctors and health workers, expanding education for all and increasing the number of teachers, taxing the hell out of the rich and non-productive financial transactions and oil companies, supporting unions and worker rights, developing useful industry and manufacturing and transportation programs, canceling “free-trade” treaties, becoming protectionist about American industry and agriculture, supporting small farms and small business, regulating the profits of the pharmaceutical industry, outlawing for-profit hospitals. And so on.
Scare the hell out of em.
You say “..the world’s worst negotiator..”.
I say “the world’s most adroit co-conspirator”.
Promoters of the “Republicans are psycho bullies pushing the well-meaning but hapless Obama around” theme are either willing participants in the theater of political manipulation, desperately clinging to an irrational emotional investment, or perhaps not paying any attention at all.
Framing what is going on in terms of the Repubs being strong and ruthless while the Dems are well-intentioned and weak not only gives false hope that the Dems might somehow change if we can only muster enough support for them, but also implicitly places the blame on us for not supporting them sufficiently enough to enable them to bravely withstand the assault of the Republican hordes.
Jeeeez, the House, Senate and WH could be 100% Democrat and they’d still hand us neocon, corporatist policy and then turn around and blame us for not clapping loud enough.
Enough with this BS. As so many others have said, we are suckers being played by both parties, with the able assistance of the media. They have us hating the “other side” over wedge issues and fighting amongst ourselves over everything else, while, on the backs of the poor and the middle class, they enrich the well connected and bully the world on behalf of giant corporations.
“If you actually care about policy and progressive priorities, you must get tough with the president right now.”
What does “get tough” mean? Send an email that some WH intern will delete? The only pressure politicians recognize is defeat at the polls. Cenk, if you won’t call for a primary opponent, then interview someone who will (see themalcontent’s posts at MyFDL) and get the ball rolling.
You need to finish up with who the “bad” cop is, Cenk. Why not third party in 2012? Ralph Nader or the Greens? I see people in mainstream media circles like you and Rachel Maddow talk about the need to use the stick in the carrot-and-stick approach, but you stop short of identifying the stick. Without a strong, highly supported challenge from the left, based on a third party or independent candidacy, what incentive does the left have to offer Dems in elections, who will move right even more unless something scarier to them than the GOP stops them?
Why are we still talking about Obama? He cemented himself on republican turf months ago and the conversation should be about pushing all of our energy into getting Liberal candidates elected in the house and the senate in 2012.
Obama should not be part of any Democratic conversation anymore, whatever happens to him in 2012 is irrelevant, the key now is to build a solid foundation with liberal congressmen.
I’m not even convinced he wouldn’t put a winger in there just to keep the Republicans from yelling.
Sadly that was my thought as well. And looking more and more likely to be the logical thing.
Fool me once….
Let me start out by saying I despise Obama. He is the worst kind of sellout, one who actually continues to pander while he empties your pockets. I was skewered in the past on this site for saying I was opposing Martha Coakly for senator in MA. So I have no love for corporate democrats (are there any other type, btw?). However, I will vote for Obama in 12. Why. One acronym: SCOTUS.
Whoever wins in 12 will get two, maybe three appointments. Obama will not appoint anyone we really like, but he won’t appoint any Scalias or Thomases or Roberts either and we can’t afford another forty of fifty years with two or three more of those on the court.
It sucks that that is all that is left but it’s where it is.
Thank you, Cenk, for one of the more reality-astute essays I’ve read in a while. Pay no attention to the fundamentalists in the comments. They’re always there, wearing their hair-shirts and sandwich signs.
This is not to diminish the clarion call you’re making. I’m just trying to get a hearty, “Well done!” through the fundies’ hissy fit screams.
You’re making a clarion call, and I hope to gawd people hear it.
The Paul Ryan Budget Challenge
Good stuff, but, revolutionary1, where is your budget?
Cenk, where is your budget?
Since I am way more qualified to draft a budget than Congressman
Paul Ryan is, my draft budget is at http://www.mjbarkl.com/usbudget.pdf . Note that unlike his, mine balances next year, preserves existing levels of service, doesn’t put hundreds of thousands of federal workers out of a job, moves very close to a single-payer health system, and generally sticks the oil companies with their fair share of taxes and Royalty payments. Many of the numbers need purification, but purifying
numbers without Office of Management and Budget or Congressional Budget Office access is difficult–still, such access will only increase the surplus for debt reduction or job-intensive public works projects or tax reduction or all three. And unlike his, mine does not need a deceptive title, or vast quantities of smoke and mirrors to achieve balance.
Anybody else up for taking on the Congressman Ryan Challenge? We need more progressive budgets!
Best wishes,
–Mike Barkley, Candidate for Congress, http://www.mjbarkl.com/run.htm
YES!!
I disagree with the SCOTUS argument for one reason: I don’t think who we appoint there is the real determinant of our future. I think the only chance we have is for enough people in enough states to force enough state legislators to call a Constitutional Convention so that we can enact amendments that will fence-in elected officials and the judiciary so that they can’t hurt us.
I know the idea of a Constitutional Convention scares the hell out of people who think it will lead to a wholesale revamping of our existing Constitution, the creation of a right-wing theocratic state, and so forth. Maybe those fears are founded. I believe that the only way we get a convention is when things are so bad that the public rises up, in which case there should be enough public pressure to keep the convention delegates focused on a limited number of reforms, like public campaign financing, elimination of corporate personhood, etc.
Many people contend that the problem is private money in politics. I agree. So my next question is, “How do we eliminate that problem?” I simply do not see those who benefit by the current system ever dismantling it. You cannot rationally expect Congress to put forth a constitutional amendment to eliminate campaign contributions and/or repeal corporate personhood. Therefore you either have to give up that goal, or accept that only alternate strategy for achieving it.
x2
“…you wonder if he recognizes what an indisputably terrible strategy it is or if he has a different agenda.”
I no longer wonder, Cenk, and neither should you. Obama clearly has a different agenda. He’s never seen a corporate giveaway or tax break for the rich he stood up to. Hell, he even proposes them.
Obama has favored advancing corporate interests by the use of government power every single time. There’s a word for that: Fascism. Obama’s a fascist. It sure would be nice for someone with a large audience to come out and say so, even if their own fascist bosses fired them for it.
Since Cenk brought this subject up, anybody for an organized campaign to bombard him with emails demanding that he come right out and call Obama a fascist, and admit that Obama is doing what he wants, not what he claims he’s being “forced” to do?
Might be interesting to see how Cenk responds.
They have. 80 members of the Progressive Caucus have proposed a People’s Budget that raises taxes on the rich, cuts the defense budget and corporate subsidies, and uses some of the savings for infrastructure projects and creating jobs. It was on HuffPo Friday and actually made some Ohio news sites.
But from the M$M? Crickets. Even Cenk and O’Donnell spent time on the latest antics of Trump, Palin and Beck, as well as bemoaning Paul Ryan’s blatantly aristocratic budget, but not one peep about the progressive budget that most Americans back when asked about specific provisions.
Well said. Get a job Cenk.
In my opinion it is past time that Obama was on the receiving end of some open and sustained pressure from progressives, a third party candidate or a progressive primary challenger would be nice as well. Hopefully they would defeat him.
Thanks for the post Cenk, I enjoy watching you on MSNBC when I can, I don’t always agree with you, but you come off as genuine and serious about the subject matter you cover, you also make me laugh the way you cover the frauds on the right and sometimes on the left, keep up the good work!
Nice list, but where’s Universal Health care? The “public option” is a joke.
Health care as a fundamental right, not an option.
It would be nice if Cenk actually took place in the discussion. Only poster I can think of who doesn’t.
“took part” I meant.
Cerik: “He (obama) will move to the middle of any spectrum!”
I respect a lot of your work, but that’s bullshit and you ought to know better.
Z
Hi Cenk,
Tonite you gave time to the Progressive Caucus People’s Budget. Over on http://www.tfdnews.com is comment from Congressman Honda discussing it. The good Congressman starts out “Budgets are more than collections of numbers….” Uh oh. I’ve been looking for those numbers since I heard about the Progressive Caucus People’s Budget two days ago. At first I was very excited to hear about this response to the Congressman Ryan madness. Now I’m stumped. Where are the numbers? My budget, http://www.mjbarkl.com/usbudget.pdf , has numbers and it balances six months from now. I want to compare the numbers with those from the Progressive Caucus. Are there numbers in the Progressive Budget? It does exist, doesn’t it? A letter stating principles is nice. But, please, urge them to reveal the numbers.
Best wishes,
–Mike Barkley, Candidate for Democratic Nomination for Congress,
http://www.mjbarkl.com/run.htm