[8-17-11: Update #2: Scroll to bottom of page.]

[Slight edit update to correct the record on Jane Hamsher, thanks to commenter Chatty Kathy for the correction.] 

Well, daylight has come, and more reaction is coming in fast and furious on the debt ceiling deal that was reached last night.

The prevailing view on the Village Idiot Media Center is that the deal is nothing short of brilliant, since it staves off the grim reaper of default and gives some time for the country to attack the problem of the deficit…even if by doing so, it tilts the political dynamic well to the Right by emphasizing cuts in the size and breadth of government.

The prevailing view on the Far Right, of course, is a bit different: evenly divided between those like Grover Norquist who say that this is a first installment on the ultimate plan of drowning “big government” and unleashing the full power of unfettered “prosperity’ from “free market capitalism; and those like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the Tea Party apparatus who would much rather have the full payment now or have the economic Armageddon happen quickly and immediately, so that the country can be immediately rebuilt in  their neo-Confederate image.

Meanwhile, on the Left/liberal side, there is simply outrage and shock that a Democratic President would put at risk major portions or the legacy of the New Deal just to gain an agreement with the very people who don’t even recognize him as an equal, let alone as President. The anger is so thick that cries for primarying President Barack Obama are expressed openly by enraged liberal Dems and independent progressives.

However…there are some who call themselves liberals and progressives who still want to believe in the President, that will forever spin everything he does as nothing more than brilliance and “30-dimensional chess”, and will find, even in the biggest haystack, the golden needle that justifies his strategy and debunks all the critics as “emoprogs” and “Left ideologues” who put their own hysteria above reality.

The People’s View blog is one such example of such “Obambot” worship. They have been one of the loudest voices on the “liberal” side for defending Prez O’s actions against the critics on the Left, and they aren’t shy in naming names, either. Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald, for example, was previously called out as a “right-wing populist”,  a “libertarian”, and even an anti-Latino “racist” (using one 2005 Salon column he printed where he kinda sorta somewhata agreed with a point by Ron Paul about immigration…but mostly because Greenwald happened to call out Obama and the Democrats’ treatment of liberals as mere stepping stones to be seen at election time and not heard any time else. Similarly, sister Salon.com columnist Joan Walsh was equally pilloried by People’s Daily and other Twitter Obama loyalists when she dropped the “asshole” bomb on defenders of Prez O’s negotiating skills (or lack thereof), and Firedoglake’s founder Jane Hamsher has been especially targeted because in a recent FDL diary, she referred to Obama loyalists as “the dumbest mutherfuckers on the face of the earth”.

Course, the hatefest between Hamsher and Obama loyalists go way back, as far back as the 2008 Presidential primary, when Hamsher was a big Hillary Clinton backer Firedoglake was at the epicenter of the Great “Obambot” vs. “PUMA’” pissing contest, where the more fervent Hillary Clinton backers there were furiously going to extremes trying to paint Obama as unqualified…even going as far as invoking his race and passing on thinly veiled smears about Michelle Obama being a “Whtey” hater. Hamsher also had been giving money out to other bloggers critical of Obama at that time…including Greenwald..which explains the hatemongering towards him as well.

But..that’s neither here nor there, so let’s not digress.

To the folks at People’s Daily, Obama’s doing the best he can with the hand he’s dealt, and he’s kicking the Republican’s asses all over the field..and if the “emoprogs” would just STFU and back him full tilt and quit enabling the Right through division, then all would be wonderful.

Which brings us to……their analysis of the debt ceiling compromise bill, which was posted by correspondent “Deaniac83″ this morn. Basically, D83 seeks to defuse the memes going around by the “emoprogs” that the deal was simply an unmitigated disaster for liberals that greases the wheels for drastic, soul-killing cuts in social programs in the middle of a recession, and which all but kills any hope of extending the New Deal social programs beyond the horizon. In his view, however, the bill actually looks a lot better than the hype, and even counts as a major win against the forces of evil.

Well…let’s see if he’s actually correct in that, or just projecting his usual Obamamania.

First off, Deniac takes a proverbial bat to the head of Paul Krugman, New York Times economic columnist and one of the loudest critics of Prez O’s overall economic rightward tilt.

Paul Krugman is a political rookie. At least he is when compared to President Obama. That’s why he unleashed a screed as soon as word came about the debt ceiling compromise between President Obama and Congressional leaders – to, you know, avert an economic 9/11. Joining the ideologue spheres’ pure, fanatic, indomitable hysteria, Krugman declares the deal a disaster – both political and economic – of course providing no evidence for the latter, which I find curious for this Nobel winning economist. He rides the coattails of the simplistic argument that spending cuts – any spending cuts – is bad for a fragile economy, ignoring wholeheartedly his own previous cheerleading for cutting, say, defense spending. But that was back in the day – all the way back in April of this year.

Now..aside from the hilarity of referring to the long-time columnist of the Times as a “political rookie” (you mean, unlike the blog writer, who fails to note how his own economic expertise compares to that of Krugman’s, other than political smack-running??), he ignores the basic fact that Krugman’s full case is that of the classic liberal Kenyesian: that cutting domestic spending across the board in the middle of a deep recession is NOT going to promote any form of economic growth that will benefit the public…unless you are a Reaganite “supply-sider” who thinks that tax cuts miraculously will generate so much “prosperity” that government revenues will explode enough to pay for the cuts. (Or a Tea Party old school conservative, who believes that simply doing away with whole chunks of government not dealing with defense, prisons, surveillance, or bare essentials, combined with the gold standard, will restore the old 19th Century glory,)

Also not D83′s emphasis on cracking Krugman on “defense spending”…surely, the former isn’t implying that the Pentagon budget should not be touched, because spending on endless wars is actually GOOD for the country, isn’t he?? The “Obama KILLED Bin Laden!!!!” card not working so well, much??

Nexxxxxxxt….

But as I said, Paul Krugman is a political rookie compared to Barack Obama. He is either unwilling or unable to actually look at the deal that was announced and realize what just happened: Barack Obama ate John Boehner‘s lunch, and then he turned Boehner out to go preach to his conservative colleagues that this eating of the lunch by Obama is actually politically good for them.

I am not kidding. Nor exaggerating. I will show you exactly how that happened if you bear with me a little bit. But first, let’s get some details of the deal out of the way so that everyone has an idea what we’re talking about.

WOW…this is going to fun, especially considering that the prevailing feeling across the political spectrum is that Obama was taken to the cleaners by Bonehead and McConnell (notwithstanding the Limbaugh/Beck/ClusterFOX line that Obama wasn’t taken to the cleaners ENOUGH).

D83 then gives the deets of the deal, which I won’t rehash since I already did so in my last post.  And then, the fun begins.

He first goes after the brohaha about the “triggers”, those automatic cuts that are supposed to kick in in January of 2013 if the “Super Committee” fails to reach an agreement on cuts that can pass Congress, or if the Balanced Budget Amendment is not ratified (a vote is required, but not approval by Congress or ratification by the states). Those cuts would be equally split between defense and Medicare payments to providers, which would not touch Medicare payments to beneficiaries. Here’s D83′s analysis:

No, the loudest screeching noise you hear coming from Krugman and the ideologue Left is, of course, Medicare. Oh, no, the President is agreeing to a Medicare trigger!!! Oh noes!!! Everybody freak out right now! But let’s look at the deal again, shall we? From the White House fact sheet, here is what the President actually agreed to.

Consistent With Past Practice, Sequester Would Be Divided Equally Between Defense and Non-Defense Programs and Exempt Social Security, Medicaid, and Low-Income Programs: Consistent with the bipartisan precedents established in the 1980s and 1990s, the sequester would be divided equally between defense and non-defense program, and it would exempt Social Security, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, programs for low-income families, and civilian and military retirement. Likewise, any cuts to Medicare would be capped and limited to the provider side.

Read that again. That’s what the media and the whiners are not telling you. The President agreed to no Medicare benefit cuts in the “trigger.” None. The cuts, if they automatically happen, would go to whom? The providers. Who are these providers? Doctors, hospitals, clinics, Medical device makers, service providers, drug manufacturers. Who do you think they mostly donate to in the political season? The entire pressure on these Medicare cuts are on the private medical (and pharmaceutical) industry! So let’s ask that question again. The Medicare “trigger” is a trigger really from whom again? As a matter of fact, both big triggers (Defense and Medicare provider cuts) are triggers for the Republicans!

Of course, it would be natural for an Obamabot to use the White House press release for his analysis. Problem is, he only has HALF the story right.

Yes, the triggers would not nominally touch Medicare recipients’ benefits directly through monetary cuts…but, given the huge amount of cuts required ($1.5 T over 9 years from FY 2013 to 2021), that would amount to $750B total or $80+B a year in cuts to Medicare providers. That’s not a small chunk of change..and I’d bet ‘ya that those involved will either raise plenty hell in Congress or simply decide to just not take in Medicare recipients at all, if they’re not going to get subsidized. Fewer providers generally mean less a quality of service and more inconvenience for beneficiaries…and a greater cost to them in transportation and even services, since there will probably be more co-pays or other out-of-pocket fees tacked on for basic essential services.

In other words…very much a CUT, and potentially a pretty deep one..on top of the already steep discretionary cuts that would take effect immediately upon passage of the debt ceiling bill..the cuts that would take effect for 10 years.

The REAL bone ignorance of D83, however, lies in his complete dismissal of political dynamics. He ignores that because the TeaPublicans control the House of Representatives, they can use the regular appropriations process — you know, the process where funding for the functions of government actually take place — to extract far deeper and more death-dealing cuts to social spending than even the debt ceiling compromise offers.

Remember that the cuts are not line-item cuts to specific programs, but broad-based caps in which Congress can decide in the spending bills can determine actual spending details…and the TeaPubs, I guan-DAMN-tee you, will exploit the process directly to undercut the cap and underfund social spending programs even below the baseline…especially since they have the ultimate nuke of standing on their hands and allowing a government shutdown when the fiscal year ends on September 30th. (And, they’ll get the same hammer again next year for the FY 2013 budget, too.)

What’s to say that Prez O won’t give up the ghost and compormise away still more cuts, or simply use the “Soooper Catfood Committee” as a ruse to sell out Medicare, Medicaid, AND Social Security, in order to avoid another “Shutdown Smackdown” right in the middle of his reelection campaign?? If putting the pressure on him worked so well for the Repubs (and the Tea Partiers) before, why not go for broke and wait for him to cave again?? *cough*StimiulusPackage*cough*  And again?? *cough*GitmoClosureGuantanomoTortureKSMCivilianTrial^cough*  And again?? ^cough*ExtendingBushTaxCuts*cough*  And again?? *cough*FinancialReformElizabethWarren*cough*  And…

Finally for this segment, remember that Prez O is already ON THE RECORD of wanting to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid through “entitlement reform” via the original Simpson-Bowles Catfood Commission, which he himself organized after Congress failed to act in 2009…and that he was the one, NOT Boehner or McConnell, to initiate bringing cuts to Social Security and the other “entitlements” to the debt ceiling negotiation table as a bargaining chip. Or, perhaps D83 managed to miss that memo from the White House??

So while Krugman is correct in pointing out that the Teabaggers will hold everything and its mother hostage in order to get what they want, what they want is already being taken away from them: they will not be able to threaten the deficit reduction group with looming cuts in Social Security, or programs for the poor, civilian or military retirement, or Medicaid, or even Medicare benefits. Instead, if the Republicans do not let the deficit committee act in a manner commensurate with the President’s demand that it include tax revenue increases, they will be setting up big defense cuts and setting themselves up for dry campaign coffers on donations from the medical and pharmaceutical industries.

And oh, by the way, has Congress ever adjusted Medicare provider payments that are scheduled to decrease by law? Oh, that’s right. Congress does that every year. It’s called a Doc Fix.

See the graphs on “Government Shutdown” above. Also, because of the specific balance in the Soooper Committee (6 Dems, 6 Pubs), I’m guessing that the Pubs will be able to stand their ground against even a hint of increased revenues…unless they came with the explicit promise of revenue neutral tax reform, allowing the Bush tax cuts to extend to infinity, or repealing Obama’s prime jewel, the Affordable Care Act. In fact, I even expect that at least one of the Dems on that committee would be more than willing to cross the aisle in favor of entitlement cuts in the name of “deficit reduction”.

Moving on, please…D83 moves on to the timing of the “triggers” and the syncronization with the Bush tax cuts expiring simultaneously.

You see, these so-called “triggers” do not go into effect in 2012. They go into effect in… drumrolls… 2013. Again from the White House fact-sheet:

Enforcement mechanism established to force all parties – Republican and Democrat – to agree to balanced deficit reduction. If Committee fails, enforcement mechanism will trigger spending reductions beginning in 2013 – split 50/50 between domestic and defense spending. Enforcement protects Social Security, Medicare beneficiaries, and low-income programs from any cuts.

So the President gets the debt limit increases now, and the triggers don’t even kick in until more than a year from now. The cuts are backloaded. Why do you suppose that is? Yeah, because Congress is notorious for changing its mind when push comes to shove. Oh, and there’s this thing that’s supposed to have happened by 2013. Oh right, a presidential election will have intervened. Republicans already lost the 4th reddest district by going after Medicare. So anyone who thinks that absent something from this “supercommittee,” Congress will not actually block a big Medicare provider cut in an election year please step forward; I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

Oh, but ye of little knowledge of Tea Party extremism, dude..or how they have completely overwhelmed the Republican Party regulars. First off, they don’t really give a care about public opinion, since they are motivated by a higher voice…namely God, as interpreted by the teachings of Rush Limbaugh, R. H. Rushdoony, and Glenn Beck, financed through the coffers of Richard Mellon Scaife, Richard Viguerie, and the Koch Brothers. (The latter also fund the very DLC/Third Way thinktankers that are currently feeding Obama’s brain, too.)

Now, it is true that Congresses can change their composition, and if Democrats do in fact rally round in 2012 and oust enough TeaPartiers and Repubs to retake control of the House while retaining control of the Senate, then it’s a different game entirely. Problem is, though, has Obama’s previous actions in taking huge hot dumps on New Deal/Great Society policies and driving progressives and liberals under his well financed fleet of DLC buses so alienated and angered liberals and regular working/poor folk that they are willing to drop the middle finger at Dems come 2012?? If the deportation crisis amongst Latin@s isn’t enough to scare Obama into at least some concern other than mere spinning or blissful dismissal (because they’ll always come back due to fear of the GOTP’s racism, or so the meme goes), then what the hell will??

And let’s not forget…there is that voter suppression drive, the control of the electronic polling by Diebold, and  the Citizens United-led pipeline of cash that the Right can use at their disposal to drown any liberal candidate. Only organization and/or a massive grass roots political movement can counter that…and kicking on hippies and poor folk for not praising the man who contributed to such kicking to begin with is probably not the best strategy for uniting the forces for the 2012 battle.

Try the Golden Gate Bridge, sir…it may be cheaper. If it’s not already sold to Cintra to balance the budget, that is.

Oh…did I mention those Bush tax cuts expiring in 2013??

There is another little trigger for the Republicans, but it’s technically not part of the deal. It’s a trigger to get serious about revenue increases. It’s the Bush tax cuts. And the President is ready to use his veto pen to raise taxes on the rich if Republicans prevent the committee charged with deficit reduction from seriously delving into revenue increase. From the White House:

If the Committee does not succeed in meaningful balanced deficit reduction with revenue-raising tax reform on the most well-off by the end of 2012, the President can use his veto pen to raise nearly $1 trillion from the most well-off by vetoing any extension of the Bush high income tax cuts.

In other words, do meaningful tax reform to raise revenue and take away the tax welfare state from the ultrawealthy and multinational corporations, or the highest income brackets will go up anyway. Oops.

Hip, hip, hooray!!!!  We are saved!!

Except, ahhh, that the House TeaPartiers can simply attach extensions of the Bush tax cuts to any essential bill they choose, as in, any continuing resolutions that would keep the government from shutting down (and they would get two chances at that this year and next). Or…a TeaPub senator could just filibuster any bill that attempts to reach the Senate and simply gum up the works until they got the tax cuts extended. Errrr….OOPS, indeed.

And…the House members of the Sooooper Committee can simply unite and form one of Michelle Bachmann’s ‘blood pacts” that unless the President agrees to some extension of the Bush tax cuts as a part of the “tax reform” phase of deficit reduction, they will shut the Congress down totally. Besides, Obama has, once again, already provided a nice template for extending at least some of the tax cuts beyond 2013 (at least, for those making below $250,000 or $1 million, depending on the plan proposed), in exchange for some token revenue enhancers and repeal of tax deductions (such as for yachts or the home mortgage interest deduction, or simply raising the eligibility age for Medicare or increasing the income liable to taxation while flattening the tax rates).

And even in that option lays a huge trap, because the TeaPubs can simply tie legislation extending ALL of the Bush tax cuts to continuing resolutions or other legislation passing Congress, and simply double-dog dare the President to veto it and thusly throw it back against him and the Dems with “MARXIST SOCIALIST DEMOCRAT OBAMA WANTS TO INCREASE YOUR TAXES FOR MORE BIG GUVIMENT SPENDING!!!!!!” attack ads.

This isn’t to say that popular anger at the TeaPublican excessiveness couldn’t flip enough people to the Democratic side and ultimately reelect President Obama in 2012, so that he has enough slack to control the policy again. But, would people ever trust him to do that, especially since he had a supermajority of Democrats in both houses in ’08 and ’09, yet so underperformed and undewhelmed by betraying progressive policies and governing from the dead Center-Right, what’s to say that without a strong and CRITICAL (and note I capped that word, Deaniac) Left to hold him accountable, he wouldn’t steer back further to the Right??

Oh…and did I mention that the whole debt ceiling debate will have to be fought all over again in 2013, when this compromise expires?? Mercy.

Maybe by then Prez O will tire of the antics and rely on the resources that such “emoprogs” have been offering him that would have avoided all this drama, kicked the living HELL out of the TeaPubs, and armed the progressive foot soldiers in his support rather than in opposition to him. Like, say, a couple of $30 trillion platinum coins?? Or, standing down Congres and the Supreme Court and challenging the debt ceiling law under Article 4 of the 14th Amendment?? Or..actually taking a principled stand against even TOUCHING the Big 3 entitlements?? Or, even, the heresy that the real cure for our economic plight is NOT to cut down the poor and working class and shred the government, but actively USE the government as a tool for livable wage jobs and infrastructure upgrades and education??

And finally, there is this wonderful misreading of Bonehead’s political woes.

As it turns out, if you look at the details, the President essentially gave up almost nothing in the triggers. John Boehner, as usual, put himself between two triggers (three, if you count the clock ticking on the Bush tax cuts), both bad for his party. McConnell is basically trying to sell his surrender pig with a little lipstick on. And Boehner went dancing to his conservative House morons about how great this deal is for them. But then by now, we should all have learned that John Boehner is very bad at his job, and that President Obama always eats his lunch, and leaves him there holding the teabag.

Surrender to WHOM, D?? Perhaps, you have forgotten that the reason that Bonehead of Orange looks like he’s been through a wringer is because he has…except that the wringer’s being powered by the Tea Party/New Right faction of the GOTP. Remember, he had attempted to sell one of the original compromises once before…and promptly got his ass dropkicked by Bachmann, “PsychoNazi” Steve King (IA), and the rest of the “Cut, Cap, Balance” crew. That’s why he had to rewrite the bill to make it even more right-wing than ever, you see.

Incidentially….Deaniac might want to delay the confetti and cake a bit, because it’s not quite over yet. This compromise will more than likely pass the Senate, but the House is another kettle of fish.  Between the absolute rage of the lib/prog Dems (led by, of course, the Progressive and Black Caucuses) over Obama’s betrayal, and the consistent opposition of the CCB/TeaParty coalition (reinforced by the ClusterFOX/Limbaugh/Beck/Palin Far Right Noise Machine) that the plan is insufficiently cruel and doesn’t link the BBA passage to the debt ceiling increase (or, simply, that it allows the increase in the first place), you have a solid 200 votes in the House against the deal. 18 more votes flip in the “no” direction, and BOOM goes the dynamite.

And, of course, we all know whom Deaniac83 will then blame for that. Probably NOT the Teabaggers. Which, says more about the real intent of this “People’s View” than anything else.

Memo, Deaniac: With stenographers like you, who needs the Progressive Policy Institute??

Update (8-17-11):

Well, well, well…looks like the dam is bursting wide open now between the Obamabots and the “Firebaggers”.

Amanda Terkel over at the Huffington Post just posted there a story on a fundraising email that was sent out by the New Mexico head of Obama For America 2012 (OFA), Ray Sandoval, on August 1st, right after the debt ceiling compromise was passed.

What mikes this email particularly interesting is that it uses as its main fundraising kick a world class beatdown on liberal/progressive critics of Prez O as “the Firebagger Lefty Blogosphere” for not falling in line behind their leader.

But the real ass kicker in all this is what Sandoval offers as the bait for the shakedown: He basically cut and pasted verbatum the very same People’s Daily blog post whacking Paul Krugman and the “Pro Left Firebaggers” for their alleged bitching and moaning about the debt ceiling compromise.

Ms. Terkel notes that this is not the first time that Obama officials have used intermediaries to smack down  progressive/Left critics, noting the infamous Robert Gibbs “Professional Left” smack, the “Left of the Left” barb for those wanting a public option as part of health care reform, and the previous media attack on critics such as Glenn Greenwald, Jane Hamsher, and even Krugman.

Ms. Terkel also manages to out the author of the People’s Daily post, originally glossed as “Deaniac83″.

The rest of the email was a blog post taken from a blog called “The People’s View,” run by Spandan Chakrabarti. Chakrabarti writes that he has “been participating in online and offline liberal activism since 2003, when Gov. Howard Dean ran for president.”

A rather delicious irony, because Howard Dean back then was considered to be the “progressive” gadfly that was “too liberal” for the Presidency.

The Terkel post can be found here.

Jane Hamsher has now posted over at Firedoglake a biting rebuttal  to Sandoval, which can be referenced here.