So now the false story of "the cave" has Boehner putting out a statement:

[jenmito]

"Republicans made a pledge to America to permanently stop all the tax hikes scheduled for January 1st. We're glad to see the President's most trusted adviser now agrees with this course of action. I hope he and the President will show leadership by convincing Speaker Pelosi to stop these tax hikes permanently in the upcoming lame duck session."

ETA-Wolf Blitzer reported this statement from Boehner's office after repeating the false story of the supposed "cave."

And this is how the BS spreads-with the help of the PROGRESSIVES spreading the lies, too. :eyes:

[SpiralHawk]

1. They are in no way tax hikes, you dumb RepubliRube

They are a return to the agreed up tax rates for fatcats. So stop your RepubliWhining and RepubliLying.

[jenmito]

6. Of course they're not. But this is how the lie starts and spreads and is

repeated. This is how the RW wins. They are helped by the "progressives" who REPEAT the reported lies, spread petitions around, stoke up anger, and there we go again.

[FSogol]

2. Letting a temporary tax cut expire is not a tax hike.

The Democrats need to fight rw memes and disinformation.

[Diamonique]

3. Fuck these assholes!

They win a few seats, take control of ONE house of Congress, and they think they rule the world!

[Parker CA]

4. Exactly. The R's have just been handed a golden egg once again. Very sad. nt

[proud patriot]

5. FUCK THAT !

[jobycom]

7. The false story can only spread with the media's complicity. nt

[jenmito]

10. Yup-including the "progressives" like Cenk Uygur and Adam Green and the Huffington Post, etc. n/t

[jobycom]

21. If they are calling this a tax hike, shame on them. nt

[JustAnotherGen]

8. Yeppers

Right on schedule. I've sent an email to both of my D-Senators today . . . I want to know where the people are on the left say, "Hell NO YOU WON'T Get any of the shit you promised!"

[dave29]

9. meanwhile, Obama lands 15+ billion dollar 55k jobs export deal.

But you'd think he was busy killing off every last one of us with his supposed acceptance of eternal tax cuts for the wealthy and hatred for progressives (for whom he is preparing prison cells and death panels at Guantanamo).

[Hawkeye-X]

11. Ok, permanently stop? OK We'll hold you on that. As usual you'll fail

and the '12 will be a slaughterhouse for the Thugs. I expect a 80% turnover rate for all Republicans and the beginning of the true death of the GOP.

It needs to be cemented down and buried forever and declared highly radioactive and toxic.

Hawkeye-X

[sally cat]

12. He thinks Axelrod gave him an opening and he swooped in damn quick. Not good.

[jenmito]

13. It was HuffPo and the PCCC who spread the lies. n/t

[jeff47]

23. You VASTLY overestimate the influence of HuffPo and PCCC (nt)

[jenmito]

26. Really? It's spreading ALL OVER the cable news networks. And Adam Green will be

on Ed Schultz's show talking about it AGAIN. MSNBC has been reporting on it all day, too. I can only imagine what FAUX is saying.

[jeff47]

28. Timelines are important

Obama actually caved last week in his radio address, where his proposed compromise was a temporary extension...and again, we're following the stupidity of pre-compromising.

In any event, Obama's 'temporary' extension is just sophistry. That extension would expire in the thick of the 2012 election, and Obama is not brave enough, nor good enough at politics, to 'raise taxes' in the middle of his re-election campaign.

So if we play word games and pretend 'temporary' is really temporary, then the HuffPo was wrong. If we live in the real world, 'temporary' is permanent.

[ProSense]

30. This is a perfect example

of my way or the highway:

"Obama actually caved last week in his radio address, where his proposed compromise was a temporary extension...and again, we're following the stupidity of pre-compromising."

That is your interpretation. The President did no such thing.

You think there should be no compromise and the tax cuts should expire. Maybe the President doesn't see it your way. The fact that he is open to compromise doesn't mean caving to the GOP or giving them exactly what they want.

The President wants the middle-class tax cuts, that is, he does not want them to expire.

The GOP wants a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the rich.

In order to get what he wants, the President will have to give the GOP something they want, and that doesn't mean giving them permanent tax cuts for the rich or even temporary tax cuts for the top one percent.




edited typo

[jeff47]

34. Wow are you ignoring the actual argument.

"That is your interpretation. The President did no such thing."

Today is a collection of events that have led us to this point. It did not happen in a vacuum.

2007: Obama says all the Bush tax cuts must expire on time.
Early 2010: Obama says the top 2% of the Bush tax cuts must expire on time.
Late 2010: Obama says he wants the top 2% of the Bush tax cuts to expire.
Last week: Obama says he might be willing to compromise on extending the top 2% tax cuts.

I am capable of drawing a line between 4 points, and noticing the direction of travel.

"You think there should be no compromise and the tax cuts should expire."

No, I understand how to negotiate. On this issue and at this time, the Republicans need the Democrats more than the Democrats need the Republicans.

"In order to get what he wants, the President will have to give the GOP something they want"

No, he doesn't. Pass the bill in the House (where we have plenty of votes) and bring it to a vote in the Senate. The Republicans will either have to pass the bill, or create a grand spectacle of them defending tax cuts on massive Wall Street bonuses. Roll out the cots and get the news networks a-yapin'.

If they pass it, we get the tax cuts we want.

If they filibuster it, we get to spend the next 2 years shouting from the rooftops, "The Republicans raised your taxes because we wouldn't give more money to Wall Street."

Either way, we win. So why compromise?

(More to the point, the Republicans aren't nearly as politically moronic as the Democrats, and would not actually filibuster it. The filibuster threat is an attempt to get Democrats to cave.)

[ampad]

14. I am sure they are elated over at Huffington post NT

[jenmito]

15. So am I. They're as bad as The Drudge Report. n/t

[impik]

31. And here too

[ProSense]

16. And they think it's only elected Democrats handing the GOP talking point. Look at

this crazy piece at Daily Kos:

Yes, agreeing to the GOP tax cut plan would be caving

Sorry folks, there's nothing ambiguous about this: agreeing to the Republican tax cut plan without putting up a fight would pretty much be the textbook definition of caving.

<...>

As Greg Sargent points out, any plan that both extends the upper-income tax cuts and fails to decouple them from the middle-income tax cuts represents a clear Republican victory. The Obama administration is now trying to define victory as being any plan that (a) extends middle-income tax cuts and (b) doesn't include a permanent extension of upper-income tax cuts. Implicit in this is the notion that they will accept a temporary extension of both tax cuts without decoupling. As Greg points out, in three separate statements today, the White House has refused to back insist upon permanent extension of the middle-income tax cuts.

Hope isn't necessarily lost. It's possible that things could change. But based on past experience, I wouldn't hold your breath. Assuming that the White House does end up agreeing to the GOP position, we can have a debate about whether or not it was good politics to do so, but we can't debate whether or not it was caving. The compromise position involves both sides making sacrifice. In this case, the compromise position is a permanent extension of middle-income tax cuts and a temporary extension of upper-income tax cuts. But a temporary extension of both is caving. It almost certainly guarantees the upper-income tax cuts will be effectively permanent, and that runs counter to every argument President Obama has made about tax cuts from the early days of the presidential campaign through last Saturday.

<...>

First, what the hell is the purpose of defining a compromise a clear victory for Republicans, and then continuing on to declare that the acceptable compromise position as a "a permanent extension of middle-income tax cuts and a temporary extension of upper-income tax cuts"?

Also, who is proposing this: "a temporary extension of both is caving"

The piece makes no sense the way it's written

I get the point: don't agree to a temporary extension of both, but what is with the declaration and the title?

I can't help but think some of these bloggers are trying to vindicate Sam Stein for his lousy piece.

[jenmito]

17. I just don't understasnd why our side does this. n/t

[ampad]

22. I think the Huffington post does it for attention

The Huffington post and the rest of the media progressives that love to push conflict. Nothing says ratings like good infighting.

[jenmito]

27. That's sad. n/t

[playstation]

20. Obama Caved on the Bush Tax Cuts Last Week, Not Yesterday

For a long time, President Obama (or Candidate Obama) wanted to let the soon-to-expire Bush tax cuts for the wealthy (a.k.a. families making over $250,000 a year and individuals making over $200,000 a year) die a natural death, while extending them permanently for those making less. But in his post-election press conference, 60 Minutes interview, and weekly YouTube address that nobody watches last week, Obama signaled a willingness to compromise with Republicans by extending the rich-people tax cuts at least temporarily. And Robert Gibbs even went so far as to suggest last week that they'd be open to extending all the tax cuts on a one- or two-year basis, including those for people making less than $250,000.

That's pretty close to an optimal position for the GOP — they didn't want to "decouple" the taxes, because then they'd have to vote on extending "rich-people tax cuts" by themselves at some point — so if you consider such a compromise "caving," then that's when the caving happened, not — despite the reaction of the Internet today — in David Axelrod's interview with the Huffington Post last night, in which he seemed to merely reiterate the same position...

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/11/did_obama_cave_on_the_bush_tax.html

[ProSense]

24. "Obama signaled a willingness to compromise"

I read the President's statement, and it was clear. The "signal" referenced is implied.

They have no damn idea what the compromise looks like.

[TheCowsCameHome]

18. I'm looking for a squeezer that'll handle a 230 pound orange

I have something I want to do.

[Uben]

19. They do it just as much......

......when you have millions of people sitting at a keyboard waiting to be the first one to post something new on a political board, it's gonna happen 100% of the time. Any item construed as a current event is subject to being repeated exponentially.

That's how it works these days. Computers!

[savalez]

25. er.. thank you huffpo... yeah right.

[impik]

29. Go "progressives&#1524;!!! Keep playing straight to the RW hands.

[jenmito]

32. It's non-stop with them. Obama gets it from both sides.

[jenmito]

33. After causing so much trouble, HuffPo apparently changed their story:

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's top adviser suggested to The Huffington Post late Wednesday that the administration is ready to accept an across-the-board, temporary continuation of steep Bush-era tax cuts, including those for the wealthiest taxpayers.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/10/white-house-gives-in-on-bush-tax-cuts_n_781992.html